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I learn to swim and I have a common swimming pool in my apartment. But we don't have any trainer and I can't afford personal trainer. I don't know swimming but want to learn. Can i learn without any trainer.
if yes then please give me some tips on how to learn. My weight is 100 KG.
Also tell me me what accessories I should buy for swimming.
And can i go to swimming pool anytime or only in morning is better?
Thanks in advance
Safety first, if you want to learn to swim (as an adult), make sure you try it in a swimming pool where you can easily stand up if things go wrong and have supervision around in case of an emergency.
As someone who has learned several children to swim, I'd say its pretty hard to learn it yourself properly. Why? Because you can read the words, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to correct yourself if you do something wrong. But if you really put your mind to it, I do think it can be done.
The usual order of learning to swim goes sort of like this:
Learn how to float. This is by far the most important thing to learn if you want to swim. You see, your body is perfectly able to float without you having to anything. They key to this is exhaling deeply, filling your belly with air and relax as much as possible. While its easier to float on your back, since you can keep breathing, new swimmers will often let their butt sink down which will hurts your floating.
Start floating on your belly. Basically start at the edge of the pool, pull up your legs and push off. Then try to float in a straight line until your feel the urge to breath and stand up again. Try to have a position like in this image from Swimator Note: you should be floating at the surface, just mimic the posture:
Keep practicing this until you can float like this for at least 10 seconds without 'tumbling' over. An important thing to learn is to put your head into the water, trying to keep your head up, will 'push' your back down and ruin your floating position.
Next move on to floating on your back (watch your head, seriously!). You simply start in a reversed position compared to floating on your back. Hold the edges of the pool while pulling up your legs, then push off. Try to keep the same position as on your belly, putting your head between the arms and keep it in the water.
In contrast to floating on your belly, you should practice to maintain this position for a longer period of time. This requires you to breath in and out of a relaxed and controlled fashion. You'll notice that you start to sink when you breath out or that your buttocks start to sink deeper, so you'll have to learn how to adept to these situations. Have a look at this ehow video for more information
Learn how to move while floating. Once you've really nailed the floating, its time to learn how to move while still trying to float. The reason I tell you to push off the side of the pool is because this keeps you moving. Like a bicycle, its easier to maintain your balance if you're moving than standing still. Likewise, kicking your legs can 'push' you upwards a little bit to make floating easier.
However, remember that you shouldn't have to move to be able to float! This is important, because you'll often see poor swimmers kick like crazy, while not moving very far. That's because the water has a high resistance, if you increase your frontal surface, you're effectively slowing yourself down. That's why all swimming movements are cyclic movements and when you make a stroke, you want to use that energy as efficiently as possible: by keeping your body stretched out and simply floating.
Because it can be quite difficult to learn how to move both your arms and legs at the same time, its often easier to start with the legs first, simply kicking your legs while floating in your back or belly. The first leg movement to learn would be the breaststroke leg movement. As this ehow video shows, you can practice this out of the water. Preferably you have somebody film you or help you guide to learn the motions properly. This may feel silly, but there are countless of 'self-learned' swimmers who have a very inefficient kick, who kick without actually pushing themselves forward.
One last word of advice, don't get overconfident of your swimming skills. Take the time to practice the basic skills first, before moving on to learning strokes. I can guarantee you that better basic skills will do more for your safety while swimming than learning any stroke at all.
Feel free to come back with any followup questions if you have trouble with any of these steps and in the mean time, have a look at several other swimming resources.
As a kid, I took many years of swimming lessons. I discovered that learning how to swim, in the notion of staying afloat, is a mental skill that no one can teach you. Fear of drowning causes you to struggle. Struggling causes you to sink. Therefore, to not drown, you should stop being scared so you don't struggle. For me, the moment I realized this I instantly transitioned from using the kiddie boogie board to being able to float. It was an instant revelation. It was not a gradual learning process where I could somehow increase my buoyancy. You either drown or float - there is no in between.
If we're talking about how to swim technically, then yes, you do need an instructor. An instructor will teach you all the styles: breast stroke, back stroke, etc... He will correct your form for maximum speed and efficiency. He will show you how to place your hands and form your body to cut the water cleanly on a dive, for example.
There are two things that I learnt before I got any good at swimming.
The first I learnt in elementary school ages ago and that was to go into the shallow end of the pool, dip down to about chest height and then wrap yourself into fetal position. What that did for me was it thought me that I can float and also to learn to relax in the water. Mind you your head will be under water, but it part of learning to relax and hold your breath.
The second thing I learnt from a friend was the dog paddle. Essentially you swim like a dog. You can easily keep your head above water and the movements are easy to do. From there you can slowly experiment and learn to swim in other styles.
Good idea to take a few lessons, mainly to get confidence in the water so as not to fear training alone. Once you have control in the water you might experiment with these tweaks that made my strokes better later in life in favor of basic swim class instruction.
These techniques would hamper speed for competitive swimming, but are excellent for training.
To avoid getting water in the nose hum when the face is under water, this allows for a slow escape of air which saves the breath, and water can't get in.
Hands:
Relaxed bear paws instead of the tense cupped hand with closed fingers.... you'd be surprised how much faster you go, with less effort to pull yourself along (as well it feels like more chest and arm muscles are engaging).
Flat on the water:
The instruction to keep the body flat on the water is a bit misleading, and could be one reason why doctors recommend those with bad backs to avoid the breast stroke and crawl (these strokes arch the back awkwardly compressing vertebrae of the lower back).
Dismayed at this advice I analyzed my posture in the water and realized that it's not so much that we should be flat. We need to hold the body in a way that straightens the arch, yet also allows it to relax along the water into a cohesive swimming position. Once I made these postural changes I found even more ways harness the power of the eddies made by whip kick feet.
Breast stroke:
Make a half heart with each hand rather than making wide sweeping strokes with straight arms that slow you down with the drag.
Whip kick:
Whip kick is hard and takes a while to master (much more efficient once you get it than the frog kick). You can train the feet and lower legs for this any time, even in the bath, or in bed. Practice whip kick in the water on both front and back, using figure eight hand movements to keep afloat. Keeping the knees and feet as close together as possible scoop the feet, lower legs moving in half circles, toes drawing a half heart.
With the first attempts it can be hard to get moving, but after a day or two the lower legs get coordinated and this kick permeates into all the strokes. As well the body is better positioned to be flat yet relaxed on the water, back supported.
Crawl:
As with running, even though the crawl is a fast stroke it can not be learned by going fast or you end up going nowhere fast and getting tired. Either in an attempt to keep the hair dry or to prevent water inhalation people often do odd crawl strokes with heads out of the water, turning it quickly from side to side, swimming with arms akimbo, all interfering with the crawl. The flailing swimmer quickly becomes tired from over exertion and lack of breathing and cohesion.
To avoid inhaling water when doing the crawl, don't turn the head out of the water, instead roll the body on to one side. The head follows the body so there's no need to turn it. There is no need to gasp for a breath because you are in control of how long it takes for the other side arm stroke to complete its cycle, before bringing you face down again in the water... to do more strokes and expel the next breath.
To avoid neck pain, when coming up for air, turn to both sides rather than always using the same side. And keep the shoulders down while swimming. The body has to be relaxed in a face down float, chin down to elongate the back of the neck and avoid stress and crunching.
Trickle breathing, odd number count and upper body:
This means keeping the head in the water while you do odd numbers of arm strokes for the duration that it takes for the air to slowly trickle out. Taking short pauses to hold the breath while the air depletes enables you to hold the air longer.
To ensure that body alternates both sides time the breaths with odd numbered arm stokes (3,5,7,9). Lower numbers for slower, higher numbers for fast plowing arms.
Lower body:
Learning this tip quickly made the crawl possible to do well. Let the legs trail behind (rather than fast hard kicking). Kicking is not what propels the body, it's the upper body paddling the arms that moves you along.
Once the upper body is relaxed and in sync the legs kick in on their own propelled by only a gentle shimmy from the hips that whips power down the legs into the feet.
As you work up the amount of time between taking breaths you end up paddling more strokes. When you need a breath you roll out of the water, and if necessary, recover while doing other stokes with the face out of the water. For more intense cardio spurts work up to paddling 9 strokes with a faster arm speed.
I came to see that swimming inevitably causes us to use the breathing apparatus as is in yoga and meditation exercises. I was thrilled to find this article, he so well describes this concept.
If you mean without a paid trainer, yes it is indeed possible. Learning to swim by yourself alone is also possible but not advisable. I think the following method is the quickest, easy and safe way to learn to swim.
1.) Go with an adult and be at a depth of about waist high of the adult and the surface below is sand or smooth surface (this is important so that you don’t get injured if you accidentally scratch the surface below with your hand or feet).
2.) While standing, bend your knees so that you will dip your body and your chin is just above the waters surface. Then while at this position, raise your right hand to the front of your body to about the surface of the water, then your palm open (palm facing down and parallel to the water surface, fingers stretched & joined together) push this hand downwards (you will feel that you’re pushing down a lot of water). After the right hand reached down, do immediately the same motion with your left hand. Then do this same motions alternating the right and left hand for about 10 times.
3.) The motion of pushing the water down alternating the left and right hand is the one that lifts your head afloat. Then ask the adult person to lift you (just about the waters surface) by your waist and you in a prone position (your head above water). Then at this position do the same exercise (motions) in step 2. Notice that everytime you make a stroke (pushing water down) you’ll feel your head/body moves up.
4.) Then when you are accustomed to the alternating motion of pushing water down with your hands, “while you are doing this exercise (motions)”, ask the adult to move his hold from your waist to your feet (hold both feet at about 6 inches below the water surface). This means that if you don’t do the alternating stroke of your hands, your head will go down the water surface (so you must keep doing the motions). If you cant keep your head above the water, just practice more with the adult holding your waist, then if you feel confident, ask the adult to hold your feet. By the way, when you raise your hand to the surface, make your palm/fingers to point downwards so that you’ll push as little water as possible to the top (to the opposite direction). Also for beginners, it’s not necessary to raise your hand above the water surface, and is even not advisable because if you raise your hand above the water surface the tendency is you’ll splash water around and water may get to your eyes or nose and hindering you. You also don’t need to be super fast with your hand movements (just fast enough for you not to lose your breath). Also while making these hand movements, try to keep on breathing (not holding your breath; but you may hold your breath in this step; however it is necessary not to hold your breath in step 5).
5.) “Your hands are the ones that will keep your head above water while your feet are the ones that will propel you forward”. This is done by kicking your feet (any type will do but alternate will be easier) to push water rearward. When you can consistently keep your head above water while the adult is holding your feet, ask the adult to let go of your feet, and then do the kicking (while your hands are doing the downward strokes). Make sure your direction is going towards shallower or same depth of water. Also make sure you keep on breathing (not holding your breath).
6.) If you can keep you head above the surface for about 5 seconds with no one holding you and you doing the motions described above with your hands and feet, then you already know how to swim. You’ll only need to practise more in order to swim for a longer duration.
7.) You will need to learn how to launch yourself to swim in shallow water without assistance. First stand straight, then bend your knees to dip your body so that the water level is about to your diaphragm. Raise one hand forward above water, the other hand lowered. Then lean forward, and when the water level reaches slightly below shoulder level, do a “gentle” kick with your feet (like a gentle jump) to launch yourself forward and slightly upward. At the same time do the downward stroke with your raised hand, and proceed with the swimming motions like in step 5. Make sure you are swimming towards shallower water.
