Can anyone swim on here?

[Benny91]

As I’m 32 years old and cannot swim, (I only can swim 2 meters in the shallow end of a pool, with front crawl only) I can’t because when I was younger I suffered with severe eczema (due to the chlorine) and that made me not want to swim. However, I’m attending a swimming lesson for the first time since I was 11, so I’m obviously nervous! 😬

I learned to swim at such a young age that I can't remember learning. Must have been about 3. My dad taught me. We had a small lake not far from us, and lots of people would swim in it in Spring and Summer, and we used to go there. He taught my brother too. He also taught us to ride a bike.

Good luck @Benny91 Swimming is awesome!

Go for it @Benny91, you can do it!

I didn't learn to swim until I was 27, prior to that I was just too afraid. I'd had nightmares about falling into deep water and drowning since I was a very small child, no idea where that fear came from!

I did council lessons to start with in a class with other adult learners, we all supported and encouraged each other and it was lovely.

You'll need good goggles - I think masks are actually more comfortable than goggles and have a better scope of vision. When you look around underwater it is beautiful. You need to get comfortable with being under water so if that's a problem for you, it's the first thing to sort out. I enjoyed learning to swim underwater and found that the deep fear really lessened when you were trying to get down to the bottom of the pool, but were actually too buoyant to manage it easily!

Even if you don't start breaking world records, you'll get a lot of enjoyment and beneficial exercise from swimming, so don't give up!

I learnt to swim when I was 40. I like to say I got fat enough to be bouyant- which helped!!