Learning to swim as an adult? Here is everything you need to know

Why would an adult want to learn how to swim?

For lots of different reasons, most of which are very personal. The most common reasons are: overcoming a childhood fear or some negative experience, a desire to put yourself to the test and finally learn how to swim, in other words challenging yourself to overcome your fears and limitations.

The first thing you need to do is make that physical-sensorial and psychological adaption to water. The latter plays a key role: fear, emotionality and embarrassment can block you and make you feel over-anxious. Adults, however, can rely on their experience and fully developed motor gestures. They know that the body’s centre of buoyancy is at lung-height and their centre of gravity is near their hips, nevertheless fear and anxiety can prevent you from thinking clearly and rationally.

The key word is “familiarity”: it means feeling at ease and gaining confidence with the water. The first step to be taken is to learn how to relax in the water and then how to breathe properly, adopting the right body positions/postures and learning the right movements. There is no doubt that taking up any sport as an adult means setting yourself a goal and having the determination, dedication and patience to achieve it.

You can begin by signing up for a beginner’s course of group swimming lessons or individual swimming lessons.

A course of lessons is certainly an opportunity to mix and “socialise”, a way of making new friends, interacting and discussing hobbies and other interests, a pleasant way of escaping everyday routine.

Individual lessons are aimed at achieving your goal with the help of an instructor, who will closely monitor your every move and plan the lessons around your individual needs: the length of time it takes to learn and improve depends solely on the person’s determination and persistence.

Regardless of whether you take individual or group lessons, it may be “tough” or psychologically tiring to begin with, but you will soon see improvements. The important thing is…. not to be in a rush! Some people give up, but lots of others manage to reach the goal they are striving for. There are plenty of cases of adults who, having started swimming lessons as a beginner, now find themselves taking part in master’s races: men and women who can no longer keep away from that blue line along the bottom of the pool.

Swimming becomes an escape from everyday life, a way of releasing tension and feeling your body merge into the water, the element out of which we are made and which represents us.