A very common mistake, mainly made by parents,
is to throw the child into the water hoping that he will learn to swim.
Some animals learn to swim instinctively, humans don’t. At least not everyone. Doing this
can develop phobias such as the fear of deep water, or simply the fear of being underwater.
The second very common mistake of people learning to swim is to think that the fear will disappear.
I learned how to swim since I was 7 years old and the fear of drowning has never disappeared.
If you want to learn to swim calmly, removing your fear is not a solution.
Two years ago on a vacation I got scared of drowning. It scared me not only for myself
but for Marianna as well. Marianna couldn't swim more than 10 seconds in a swimming pool
without stopping. She wanted to learn and since then we have been swimming at least twice a week.
When we went on vacation we took a snorkeling tour. On the boat we were given the option of
wearing a life-vest. I decided that it would be better not to use it so that I could go down
and appreciate the marine life more closely. Marianna asked me if she would need one,
and since she had already swam a 100 meters without getting tired, I told her
that she didn't need one either. The water wasn't that deep but it was all covered in coral.
Marianna, jumping from the boat, cut herself a little when her foot bumped into the coral. She
kept calm and everything was going well. She swam a little and she started getting tired.
She yelled at me and I went to see what was wrong. She told me that she was tired and she couldn't go
back to the ship because it was too far away. She began to cling to me out of desperation and
we both began to sink. At that moment I felt real fear. I told her something not very helpful. "Keep
calm" is the most common advice that “experts" tell you, but anxiety comes from the subconscious,
from te amygdala, and by definition we cannot control it at that moment.
My brother is the one with lifeguard training, but he was far away. If you are already nervous
right now, make sure to watch until the end of the video. Luckily other people in the group
saw what was happening. They came over and lent Marianna a life vest that one of them didn't need.
It's not the first time I was scared of the water, but it serves to illustrate two things.
The first is that the fear of drowning never goes away, no matter how skilled a swimmer you are.
The second is actually the third common mistake. Thinking that floating is easier than swimming.
In reality, floating vertically is much more difficult than swimming. I didn't think about
it at the time but Marianna could have turned on her back and swum with me to the boat like this.
Swimming like this does not require much effort. But neither of us was prepared for that moment.
Before I tell you the fourth most common mistake I need to tell you something important.
Congratulations on getting to this point in the video. Maybe
it hasn't been easy without panicking a bit. Knowing what the most common mistakes
are is already half the solution. If you want us to take you step by step
to learn how to swim, we created a small course here on YouTube just for that.
I’ll leave a link in the description if you want to learn more about it.
The fourth mistake is thinking that your fear is irrational and abnormal. Unfortunately,
thousands of people drown every year. And the fear of going underwater is very common.
In the United States alone, where they have statistics for everything,
it is estimated that 46% of the population is afraid of going underwater.
We developed a researched and proven 11-video method to teach people with fear of deep water
to swim and float. It’s already working for people in our YouTube channel in Spanish.
If you want to learn more about the program for people afraid of going underwater click here. If
you just want to see another swimming video for beginners, click here. See you there! Swim fast!