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While it's beneficial to learn swimming as young as you possible can people should be encouraged to learn it later too if they are at least mildy interested in
by temporarara 3y ago
While it's beneficial to learn swimming as young as you possible can people should be encouraged to learn it later too if they are at least mildy interested in water. I learned to swim very young pretty much on my own and thought I was decent, but it was only after taking some technique classes later on that made swimming longer distances actually enjoyable to me.
Swimming as competitive sports never interested me at all, and unfortunately the training aspect of swimming is way too often hardlinked with it. And many other sports hobbies suffer from the same "this is a pipeline to create professional athletes from children" mentality.
- ghaff 3y agoI was never a "good" swimmer. I was fairly negative buoyancy as a teenish and barely got the one mile Boy Scout patch at one point. Never had any interest in competitive. I agree with what I think your basic point is. Swim well enough and comfortable enough so you probably won't drown in a trivial water situation or even doing stuff like canoeing/kayaking and that goes a long way. Maybe it's my background but you end up in a river or a lake sooner or later. Or you step off into something that's a bit deeper than you expected. It seems pretty stupid to not be prepared for something that seems basically normal life for a lot of people that doesn't actually require a huge amount of work.