Swim Lessons

I have a confession to make. I am an ugly swimmer. I am totally capable of getting from point A to point B, but there's a lot of splashing around and the occasional doggy paddle. I'm a rescue scuba diver by the way, so ugly swimming will not prevent you from dragging someone's ass to safety, in case you were wondering.

My friend Spenser is a badass mama and she signed her son up for infant swim lessons. E rocked it, and I loved following along with his progress on Facebook. His success got me thinking... if he's one year old and learning to swim, what's holding me back from achieving my secret dream of swimming beautiful laps? So I got to searching for swim classes.

It's difficult to find adult swim classes for people who can already swim. The options tend to be swim classes for adults who have no water experience or people looking for swim coaches to improve their triathlon performance. I am neither, and was getting discouraged when I stopped into Georgia State University's student recreation center to check out their gym. The aquatic center offers beginner, intermediate, and advanced swim lessons for TEN BUCKS for a 6 week course. (It's $20 for staff and alumni.)

The Aquatic Center at GSU

I attended my first intermediate lesson last night. I was nervous. I had flashbacks of learning to swim at day camp. The lifeguards would make you get into the pool and swim to the other side. Uncle David, the head lifeguard of the little kid's pool would swim around the other end calling out, "Swim to Uncle David!" Uncle David was morbidly obese and everyone was kind of scared of him, perhaps because of his size, but maybe more so because he was creepy as hell. Our counselors surrounded the other 3 sides of the pool with kickboards and splashed so the only way out was to head towards Uncle David. That didn't stop us from trying to reach the sides or turn around to avoid him. Amber, my swim instructor at GSU, provided an exponentially more positive experience.

I survived AND I made a new friend.

We worked on the forward crawl. Amber has already helped me make improvements with my kick. Turns out I was breaking at the knees, which is also an issue with my kipping pull-ups. I'm seeing a trend here. I'm still finding the whole breathing efficiently while moving elusive, but so did Rich Froning at first.

I ordered a pair of goggles and a flamingo swim cap. I get my hair colored next week and I am not interested in paying that kind of money to have it turn orange from the pool. I'll make sure to get some sweet photos of me in my cap on my Instagram.