A couple of years ago, when I signed my oldest child up for swimming lessons at the YMCA where our family has a membership, I signed myself up for swimming lessons too.
Until then, I could only dog paddle. I'd never properly learned to swim. I grew up hating sports, gym class, anything to do with physical activity, and always thinking of myself as clumsy and unskilled. My family reinforced it neatly: I was the "smart one" and my younger brother was the "athletic one." My school reinforced it too -- the phys ed curriculum emphasized team sports, with plenty of opportunity for screwing up and ruining the game for everyone else, and hardly ever forayed into lifetime-fitness (when it did, boys took weightlifting and girls did aerobics, not exactly inspiring).
Once out of college, and married, I discovered that, removed from competition with adolescents, humiliation was not a necessary part of physical. I got the first bicycle I'd had since I was nine or ten and found that I enjoyed even long, hilly rides. I tried strength training with free weights and liked the way it was easy to see that I could lift more each session. Long walks with my new husband became a habit of outdoor hiking.
But I still would comment from time to time about what a poor swimmer I was until a friend pointed out that, you know, they had these newfangled things called lessons.
I took lessons for a year, at the same time as my oldest son's lessons, while Mark cared for the younger one in the YMCA lobby. When my lesson was done I would take the baby and Mark would leave to run around the track. After a year of lessons I could swim a decent front crawl and backstroke (I never could get the hang of the breaststroke; maybe I'll take some more lessons later). A couple of years after that, swimming is my favorite weekday-evening workout. It's not so convenient for when I've got all three children on my own, because if the baby cries in the gym nursery it's easier to be fetched from, say, a treadmill than from the pool. But it's great for "Family Gym Night" and for leaving the kids at home with Mark.
Just recently I decided to try to get better at it -- that is, instead of just swimming comfortably until my time's up, I would push myself to go faster or farther, and try various drills to develop my skills. I got a couple of books about swimming and read them and started to apply what I read. I learned something that might be obvious to others but was new to me: that when you're actually trying to get better at something, it makes for a less boring workout. The time in the pool just flies by now and I wonder where it went.
Anyway, if there's hope for me to become comfortable with any physical activity, I guess there's hope for anyone. I can't praise the YMCA enough (that's with the M, not the W) -- they gave me great aquatics education at a good price, and they're a wonderful organization that does a ton of great stuff and deserves support.
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