I learnt to swim aged 47 after I almost drowned

Telegraph

16 hours ago

There are many ways to humiliate yourself in the water, but being pulled out of a stretch of placid sea by a 14-year-old was probably my low point.
'Delayed drowning' has long been my standard answer when asked what my default swimming stroke is. Technically, I can swim, but I'm about as adept at it as Alan Shearer would be at playing Lady Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
So thank heavens for the boat captain's son, who hauled this 90kg writer out of the water after I overestimated my abilities on a Red Sea yacht tour.
According to research from easyJet holidays, I'm not alone in being out of my depth: a study conducted by the brand this year found that one in six British adults cannot swim, and a third say they are not confident in the water.
With over 100 public pools having closed and their diving boards removed in the past two decades, many adults have been left without access, support or confidence when it comes to getting in the water.
Childhood trauma
Personally, I've disliked swimming ever since my schooldays. Readers of a certain age will remember the drill: we lined up in our pyjamas at the pool's edge, then were forced to dive in to retrieve a black brick from the deep end. My tactic of shoving the brick down my trunks as I struggled back to the surface earned me the pleasure of making the plunge three more times as punishment. And we did this, again and again, for a full hour.
As far as Sisyphean tasks go, this remains the ultimate for me. I have never, before or since this bout of aqua-sadism, felt the urge to rescue a brick from water. Suffice it to say, I've done my best to avoid swimming ever since.
The Jordanian humiliation, coupled with decades of simmering jealousy at how my friends, and, more recently, my fiancée, can effortlessly leap from diving boards and navigate even fairly choppy seas without fear, eventually got to me.
While many of my more youthful pleasures, cigarettes, fried bread, clubbing, are fading, something needed to replace them. I didn't want to ' wild swim ', a concept so smug and superior it makes Richard Hammond seem endearing by comparison. I just wanted to look less like a prat and more like a competent middle-aged bloke. I can learn to rewire plug sockets later.
Leisure centre lessons
I don't care much for leisure centres or gyms. To me, they're verruca contagion zones. But the pool where my lessons took place in south London was a surprise. The changing rooms weren't knee-deep in pubic hair and empty Lynx bottles. There were hairdryers. The locks actually worked. And the one sopping wet towel abandoned on the floor was swiftly removed by a cleaner whose face was so fierce I suspected he used the pool chlorine as mouthwash each night.
I decided not to recount my past watery woe to Rodrigo, my instructor for the next six weeks, a gentleman who, I think, could sense my palpable discomfort in this alien environment.
'You need to think about the basics as BLABT', Rodrigo told me after asking me to swim a length so he could see my technique.
'Technique' was a somewhat grandiose term for my pathetic splashing. I stayed afloat and managed the length, but I must have looked fairly awful to Rodrigo. It certainly felt humiliating as I doggy-paddled down the pool.
Desperate for advice, I listened as Rodrigo explained his mysterious acronym. 'BLABT stands for body position, leg and arm movement, breathing, and timing, those are the key elements you need to learn,' he said.
'At the moment, you're kicking far too much. Let the water do the work. Don't windmill your arms. So many swimmers think it's all about brute force, ploughing through the water. It's not. You can actually be much lazier and still be a better swimmer.'
Learning to breathe
This was Handel's Water Music to my ears. But I also suspected it couldn't possibly be this easy. I didn't know where to start with my insatiable desire to question pretty much everything he had just told me. I began with the most pressing:
'Rodrigo', I said, 'how can I do any of this when I can't even breathe with my face in the water?'
To my bewilderment, it turned out to be effortless. Rodrigo taught me, in a matter of seconds, how to softly blow bubbles out of my mouth while my face was submerged. It worked instantly. I have no idea about the biology involved, but if you pretend you're gently blowing on a mug of hot tea while in the water, nothing gets up your nose.
'Breathing is all about manipulating how we take in and let out air while we're in the water,' Rodrigo elaborated. 'Exhale while your face is underwater, inhale when it's out.'
I hadn't expected it at all, but by the end of that first lesson, my confidence in the water had improved markedly.
Learning to crawl
In my day, the only buoyancy aids we had were those bits of foam that looked a bit like gravestones. Modern swim school attendees, by contrast, are offered brightly coloured, bendy foam tubes.
Tucking one under my arms, Rodrigo explained that the noodle would force my body into a narrower position, keeping me face down with a straight back and legs. It's called the 'supine position', apparently.
It all reinforces Rodrigo's mantra: with swimming, the less frantic energy you expend, the better swimmer you become.
'With the noodle, you're showing your body and mind how to extend the arm while remaining buoyant,' he explained, striding alongside the pool edge. 'You have to learn to work with water. Every action has a reaction, so take it slow and steady at first.'
The hardest part for me was combining all the elements to execute a proper front crawl: rotating my shoulders without excessive force, timing every third stroke to come up for air, and pausing for a split second between exhaling underwater and inhaling. Rodrigo explained that pause gives the brain a micro-moment to adjust to what the body needs to do next.
Perhaps my most surprising discovery was how helpful the human shoulder is to a swimmer. Leaning the side of my head against my shoulder when taking a breath is strangely relaxing – a tiny nap before plunging back into the water, fully replenished with oxygen.
If you're wondering, the exact formula is: drop the arm, turn the chin and come up while the other arm stays overhead. Turning the chin rather than lifting the whole head is revelatory, though for the first few weeks my brain struggled to coordinate every element of a proper stroke all at once.
Lane swimming
I learnt all the basics in one lesson, but I needed four more for the elements to fully cement in my brain – and for my brain and body to finally cooperate. This wasn't frustrating. Far from it.
By the fifth lesson, I was ploughing up and down the pool, swimming around 200 metres each time in something very close to a proper front crawl. I had claimed the far-left slow-hand lane of the Vauxhall Better Health pool as my doggedly won territory. One day, I'll move up the hierarchy into the fast lane. It's good to live in hope.
With Rodrigo's patience and occasional high-fives, I am now the proud owner of a 47-year-old body that no longer needs the assistance of 14-year-old Jordanians to get me out of trouble.
I owe it all to Rodrigo, a burly, endlessly patient and calm man. He never once entered the water during my six one-to-one lessons – but he didn't need to. With the right instructor, a mere ten minutes of education is enough to start mastering the water.
Rob received lessons at the Vauxhall Better Health pool via easyJet holidays Swim School, which is offering 1,000 adults free swimming lessons until 14 September.