Why am I so rubbish at swimming?

Good, fast and efficient swimming is massively technique. Some level of anxiety in the sea won't help with good technique either.

My dad was a great swimmer. My sister was excellent. I can float and make vague progress. Pretty sure body shape, technique and practice make a lot of difference.

I used to feel the same and a friend gave me some pointers. I'm fairly sure I'm no olympic swimmer as a result but I went from 2 or 3 lengths of crawl before being knackered to 1km+. It's all about gliding and efficiency in the water so you're not basically dragging limbs at jaunty angles.

The technique my pal was teaching is called Total Immersion. Check it out on YouTube.

Never judge the ability of somebody to swim well based off their body shape. A young lad got in the pool recently, he was a bit overweight, I thought he’d be slowing me down. He then proceeded to do 100m sets in 1m15, left me for dead

If you're not great in the sea, your breathing will be all over the place. So you wont be able to swim very well.

yet numerous old and/or overweight people were making it look easy

Swimming's primarily a technique thing, and sea swimming technieque can be pretty different to pool swimming.

if I’m floating away from the boat, often struggle to make progress back

If you're drifting with a bit of a tide or a current it can be insanely hard (or impossible) to swim against it. You might be doing better than you think!

As above, technique is soooo important. I've been trying to improve from my current inefficient thrashing to something more effective. Even getting breathing sorted without lifting my head fully out of the water has made a huge difference.
Spend some time watching youtube for technique instruction and pick one element to practice each swim. I've also noticed my (still bad) technique gets even worse as I tire, so usually knock it on the head when that happens.

In a nut shell   ............. Get your bum up !!

I wish someone could teach me to swim properly. I'm middling running and biking and pretty fit. I was taught to swim in my thirties. Have had numerous lessons, watched every video on youtube. I can do 100m in 2 minutes or 2k in 40 minutes, have tried changing everything in my stroke but I'm guessing while my head says things are changing my body is always doing the same thing as no matter what I do the speed never changes.

This is a problem for me as well, reasonably fit and i'm actually quite a strong swimmer, I finished mid pack in a triathlon once, my problem is I can only do breaststroke, I just can't seem to get the co-ordination to get the breathing right when doing front crawl.

I keep meaning to get some lessons to see if that would help,perhaps give that a go.

You are too "vertical" in the water making your hydrodynamics horrible.

Get horizontal ... bum/legs up, chest down .... and be all streamlined and dolphin like

Have fun

I can swim fine, but I'm not efficient at all. It's definitely technique. SIL is a swimming teacher and she just glides through the water with ease.

I'm making a few assumptions here....

Leg position in the water is the killer of swim speed. Low legs dropped from the surface is like a massive air brake...well water brake - you now what I mean! Counterintuitivly, your head position is what determines your leg position in the water. If you are not comfortable in the open water and are swimming with your head up to see where you are going your legs will drop like a stone and your speed will wash completely away. Learning to swim in open water (this is especially crawl) with a lower head and chest, and develop a style where you look up  on the odd breath it will do wonders to your leg position and therefore your speed.

As said, technique. Most people learn to an OK standard when they're kids then never revisit it as they reckon they can swim already and the rest is fitness. My wife never learned as a kid but had months of tuition in her 30s to do a triathlon and swims brilliantly (but only front crawl, mind). The people at the sharp end of triathlon swims make it look absolutely effortless, smooth movements, little splashing but they're absolutely motoring through the water.

Find a good adult swim coach and do a few sessions, they'll probably figure out what you need to change straight away.

You all seem to have nailed what's going on.

Yes, I'm head up, so legs will be down

I need to get the breathing right and the confidence to keep my head down in swells. Might be easier said than done lol

I am an almost none swimmer but Mrs FD has been a swimmer to national standard.

We recently went on a swim holiday to Croatia (brilliant thing to do) and it was interesting to see all the techniques and shapes of people. However basically the faster people all had technique.

It was interesting watching their swim technique analysis (each swimmer was videoed under water) and you could see how important correct technique was. The coaches said drills are very important for improving technique. Mrs FD has floats and a central snorkel that she uses for doing certain drills.

Perhaps you need to look at swim coaching in your local area, the technique stuff is all better done in a pool.

I'm rubbish at swimming too, I can chug on with breast stroke for ages but don't move particularly quickly. Front crawl is a big splashy mess of arms and legs.

I have considered getting some lessons because I spend a fair amount of time in the sea kitesurfing, which is all fine until you lose your kite.

I'm also Lifeboat crew, but no one asked if I could swim 🙂

I have considered getting some lessons because I spend a fair amount of time in the sea kitesurfing, which is all fine until you lose your kite.

Yep - proper scared me this summer. Was out in a bay sailing a Laser. Next minute I am in the water and the boat is already 30ft away from me and disappearing at speed. My best breast stroke wasnt getting me any closer.

Luckily there were safety boats to hand, and hopefully they could swim 😉

The technique my pal was teaching is called Total Immersion

This....I was a rubbish swimmer, had lessons following Total Immersion, now I'm not.  Technique is everything.

Still find pool swimming as boring as....something v tedious...but I can swim properly in a pool.

Get lessons.

Can I put you all in a pool and sort you out? STW swim club?! Teaching swimming is one of the few things in life I’m actually qualified to do!

There are a million videos etc to follow but here’s my 2p anyway:

Sort your front crawl technique and body position before you try and add breathing. Just hold your breath and try and feel the glide and pull improving.

Try and have the waterline between your eyebrows and hairline - that should put you in the right body position up front.

Your feet are not kicking a football. Ideally you want them making a small splash or just below the surface, but whatever they’re doing should feel quite relaxed. Think trying to shake a pair of baggy socks off your feet, rather than a ‘kick’ movement.

When you do add breathing, do it one arm at a time, with a float in one hand out front. Don’t roll all the way round to the side, it’s more like looking into your armpit. Let out a few bubbles of breath through your mouth as you swim along, then blast the last bit out just as your mouth clears the water when you turn your head. Then a big gulp of air and put your head quickly back to a central position as your arm comes over and reaches out in front. Imagine your hands tracing a central line below your nose and tummy button - even when you’re turning to breathe. Lots of people struggle with breathing because they’re twisting too much and rocking back and forth. Not breathing every stroke is a good way to help reset your body and limit the wiggling.

I do now have empathy for those who are weaker swimmers. I've always been half decent but after a shoulder injury then a frozen shoulder it was impossible. When it was getting a little better early last spring I went for a swim in the river to test it out. The panic feeling when I realised my arm could still not turn over and the water world that has always been a virtual first home was now an alien environment was pretty significant. I'd definitely be getting lesson, because the feeling of release when it is another environment you feel at one with is pretty special.

Can I put you all in a pool and sort you out? STW swim club?!

I'm in haha

Very lucky to have spent my teenage years with a pool in the back garden.  I can do mega front & back flips, but can't really swim very far at all (Open water / sea swimming absolutely fills me with dread)

I'm reasonably fit & strong but just can't seem to co-ordinate my legs, arms and breathing to get any distance before I'm exhausted.

I've always been a confident swimmer, not that quick but could knock out 75-90 lengths of a 25m pool without any trouble before work in the mornings. Also swam in 50m pools and we also used to have a 75yard outdoor pool in town which I could do 22+ lengths of without bother. - I always found it makes a bit of difference not being able to turn every 25m for a few lengths of a longer pool before you get used to it. Swam in the sea a fair bit as well, but when I was in Australia I failed to swim across Bondi beach from the rocks at each end, which I was told is about 1km. I got about two thirds or three quarters across and thought, nope, I'm not going to make this, I need to get into shallow water so started to make beenline for the shore. Tbh the distance to the shore was almost the same as the rest of the swim but I wasn't confident at all about staying in the deep water, I was getting really sloshed around by the waves and my breathing and gone to ratshit. Was glad to put my feet on the sand tbh.

Honestly, does it matter, i'm the same, only swim occasionally over a year, for family stuff, as long as i'm not in danger from drowning or being dragged away by currents, i'm not bothered, if you want to go a little faster off a boat, the little fins are good to get a little faster with bad technique.

Unless you're going to join a swim club and do actual training to improve, it's all a bit pointless worrying about being slow, just enjoy middle age, buy some budgie smugglers and sunbathe more, if you do have to go off the boat again, why not ask them to move down current a bit while you're swimming, so you have an easy swim to the boat again.

I can't swim.

That is to say, I know how to swim in theory, but I'm seemingly dense and all my efforts go into just staying afloat.  On holiday in France one time with my then-partner, she had me lying on my back in a high-salt pool whilst she held my shoulders.  She said "I'm going to let go and you'll just float."  I held my breath, she let go and I sank to lie flat on the bottom of the pool thinking "I told you so."

Honestly, does it matter

Yes

I love getting in the sea. But when I feel like I'm not in control it's a horrible experience

She said “I’m going to let go and you’ll just float.” I held my breath, she let go and I sank to lie flat on the bottom of the pool thinking “I told you so.”

Lolz

Honestly, does it matter

I guess you can think like that. I suppose we all do about a whole load of things that we then don't do much because it's no fun....because we can't do it very well. Best analogy I can think of is learning to mend a puncture on your bike. You could say you can't be arsed and just ride around with flat tyres - it's no fun so you don't do it much but you can just about get it to the local pub down the road so it's all good. Or you could learn to mend the puncture and suddenly discover not only is it not exhausting to ride just a few yards but it can be fun too. Then you find yourself looking for occasions to ride a bike. Or ride it to a different, nicer pub.

There is the thing that if you are in a big body of water it seems like you are not going anywhere. That's just how it is not only because of wind/currents but because there are less references like in a pool. It is off putting. Slow because swimming IS slow. Don't sweat it too much. I'm a good swimmer and I find open water way different in the way it feels like you are just not going anywhere.

I'm assuming you are in a wetsuit? They help lift your legs and arse up.

Can't recommend anything else. Learnt when I was young at club level so it's ingrained after all those hours plodding up and down at 6am in the morning. Find it difficult to tell people what to do. Read what Hannah wrote and do that, it's a good description.

I’m assuming you are in a wetsuit? They help lift your legs and arse up.

No, just swim shorts we are on the North of Crete, but same if we are anywhere tbh

Can I put you all in a pool and sort you out? STW swim club?!

Not sure I'd want to be in a big pool full of people who wee in each others shoes but I am yet another member of the 'can swim to survive but that's it' posse.

wetsuit might be out of place in that instance then - but think about the SPF protection ability 🙂

I guess you can think like that. I suppose we all do about a whole load of things that we then don’t do much because it’s no fun….because we can’t do it very well. Best analogy I can think of is learning to mend a puncture on your bike. You could say you can’t be arsed and just ride around with flat tyres – it’s no fun so you don’t do it much but you can just about get it to the local pub down the road so it’s all good. Or you could learn to mend the puncture and suddenly discover not only is it not exhausting to ride just a few yards but it can be fun too. Then you find yourself looking for occasions to ride a bike. Or ride it to a different, nicer pub.

I probably wouldn't do the same analogy, i'm on about everything needs time to get good at it, swimming, biking, golf, tennis, football, etc, etc, so is the actual time required to get better worth the amount of time you swim, if it's 100 hours to get 10% better, that's 2 hours a week for a year, with lessons taking up some of that time, so not an easy thing to complete.

As with all sport, if you want to get better, get lessons, my daughter has weekly lessons and you see a lot of difference between 'feel and real', to improve, you need that watchful eye and being taught the correct way to do things.

Timely - just back from a 1km swim that i do at lunchtimes.

Its your head you need to keep down to make sure your legs don't drop. But before you do any of that, practice breathing as bad form here will tire you right out- i do each side every other stroke. Breathe out in the water and inhale as your head turns. Once you master that, start on your technique.

 I suppose we all do about a whole load of things that we then don’t do much because it’s no fun….because we can’t do it very well.

I think I strive for competency.  Once I get much beyond "adequate" I lose interest.  As regular readers will perhaps attest, I know something about a vast array of things, my knowledge and my practicality are generally a mile wide but an inch deep.  I'd consider myself an expert in very few disciplines.

I can read music, in so far as I can look at a stave and go "that's a B."  I can play the bassline to Another One Bites The Dust.  I can play the opening bars to Layla on keyboard until it gets complicated.

Party tricks could be a thread in itself.  I can juggle, for maybe 5-10 seconds.  I can solve a Rubik's Cube, eventually.  "Is this your card?"  I can stack coins on my elbow and catch them.  An outlier perhaps, I am unbeatable at beermat flipping, fight me.  I can touch-type, badly, but I don't do so because my hacker hunt'n'peck approach is faster and I never took the time to properly learn it despite spending half my life behind a keyboard for forty years.

Crucially, I have catastrophic commitment failure.  As soon as I can do something to a vague degree of competence my brain goes "yup, that'll do, we could be doing something different instead now which might be more interesting."  Half an hour after picking up a guitar and realising that I wasn't the ghost of Hendrix, I put it down in a sulk and went to do something different.

I'm a halfway decent swimmer in the pool, but definitely find open water a challenge and feel slow even if I'm not. I'm sure it's not having any points of reference to look at when your head is down. Being a bit short sighted doesn't help, but I've started wearing corrective lenses in my goggles now so should help spotting in the open. Also I'm resolutely a single side breather, another thing that really hinders open water technique. I think it's a very different challenge to pool swimming basically.

I much prefer open water, because....wetsuit! I have significant buoyancy/posture issues in a pool (similar to those described above) and the added flotation really makes a difference, turning a struggle into a pleasure.

and partly my intense fear of drowning

If you can't overcome that then you'll never be any good at swimming

She said “I’m going to let go and you’ll just float.” I held my breath, she let go and I sank to lie flat on the bottom of the pool thinking “I told you so.”

I'm the same (not that my partner is trying to drown me). I might just about be able to lie on my back and keep my nose poking out of the water if I hold my breath with full lungs. But as soon as I start breathing that period with emptier lungs means I start sinking.

I like being in the (warm!) sea, but it's hard work and I know that unlike most people if I get tired I can't just lie on my back and float ala the RNLI adverts. If I stop I die, like a shark, except sharks can breathe underwater!

We recently went on a swim holiday to Croatia (brilliant thing to do)

Starting from where? The Bay of Biscay can be a bit rough can't it?

Sounds like the breathing thing is the main bit for you currently. For me the advice that helped was that if your face is in the water then you should be breathing out pretty hard, almost blowing the air out, then when it comes time to turn your head and breath in you are ready to breathe in straight away. This made the breathing in part much less of a panic, and I also found that holding my breath with my face in the water was panic inducing too, so by always being in breathe in or breathe out mode the whole thing suddenly became very calm.

Once I got that sorted I did drills which helped with different parts of it.

One drill was to swim one arm at a time, so do a full stroke with the right arm, meet at the top, then do the left arm - catch ups. This allows you to focus fully on one whole cycle at a time to lock down the form and builds some glide in - glide is calming.

Another one was dragging the tips of your fingers through the water on the return when that arm has finished the pull and comes out by your hip, this teaches you not to muscle the return as you slowly drag your relaxed fingertips through the water, again this is nice and calming. These things combined get you to that effortless look as you relax on the returns, take your time breathing and have some glide in your stroke.

The other one was swimming with closed fists, this teaches you to keep your elbows up and catch the water with your full forearm which will give you that speed and power.

After a few lengths of each drill then do some normal swimming, and don't look at the clock but do count how many strokes it takes you to do a length, the fewer the better.

Don't both kicking, just kind of flap your legs super gently just to help keep them up in the water, they are not what's powering you.

As someone above mentioned, once the relaxing elements of this click you'll instantly go from being able to do 10 lengths before fatiguing to being able to casually do KMs at a time.

Interesting thread and probably also explains why I find swimming in a buoyancy aid a total pain in the proverbial as it lifts your shoulders/chest.

Tide and wind can be a big issue as well.  Trying to swim back cross tide and cross/up wind to the beach in 20knots of breeze in full sailing kit a couple of weeks back was interesting.

I found for technique in the pool I really had to slow down a lot to lower the amount of oxygen I was using and focus on timing and not gasping for a big lungful of air (and getting a big mouthful of water) at each breath.  That seemed to help me a lot.  Don't know if that will help others.

Some excellent stuff from Hannah.

"t’s more like looking into your armpit" (when breathing) is so excellent. In fact it's precisely what I always remind myself when breathing to my non-dominant side - in oder to not start trying to lever my front half out the water (as that drops the rear half of your body, slows me down massively, and then makes everything else go to pot as the legs will scissor-kick to get stability etc.

Couple of other things

- POINT YOUR TOES.  (I see so many strong cyclists in my tri club who are basically dragging massive anchors by having their feet pointed downwards to the bottom of the pool - point your toes like a ballerina on point to significantly reduce drag = go faster.

Think all the time the hand is there to push the water backwards - in line with your shoulder - to get max propulsion.  Any time it is pushing down or sideways is not as effective.

make sure your hand does NOT 'cross-over' to the other side of your body when it enters the water and all the time it's in the water (that just makes you fishtail... and... yep... go slower)

Make sure you've always got 1 of your 2  hands pulling/pushing backwards at any point- no big pauses in propulsion (do NOT try to glide for ever off each stroke - there lieth the route to sticking the brakes on every single stroke if not very careful).

When breathing, think of it as 1-eye-in-the-water, 1-eye-out.  Not throwing your head around so much that you have both eyes looking upwards (sometimes that has to change when very choppy - but for pools, 1 eye in the air only).  And breathe like popeye - what you want is to be breathing is the little dip / hollow in the water level that's created to the side of your head when moving.

Try to think that when your hand is entering the water, finger tips lower than the wrist, wrist lower than the elbow. Then as it enters, reach forward before the 'pull' phase starts (that gets you to rotate your core and then get propulsion from unwinding the core as your hand/arm pulls backwards.

The great news us that if you nail the technique, you'll be faster than most of the fitter people with their shite technique (Unless they are unfathomably fit). It's a constant annoyance to one of my  mates (6ft 7in, feet like flippers, shovel hands, should be faster than Michael Phelps with his physique and fitness) that on anything beyond 200m I can kick his arse whilst being 5 years older, 3 stone overweight, and since Covid hopelessly unfit.

I think Hannah touched on something else... for those getting desperate to grab a breath... breathe OUT whilst your head is under the water. That way (a) the CO2 doesn't build up in the blood stream as much (it's the CO2 that makes us want to gasp in air, not a lack of O2). And (b) then when your head (half your head !!) does go to breathe, it's only got to get air in - not get the old stuff out then get the new stuff in.

'Bubble-bubble-breathe' as my coach often describes it as (on 3 strokes per breath).

It's extremely technical. The difference between floundering and gliding along quickly is all technique, nothing really to do with fitness. Get on YouTube and start studying, then get someone to watch you swim.

‘Bubble-bubble-breathe’

Just dont use this approach if you are sharing a bath with your other half. I bubble, she breaths.

It's "disgusting" apparently.

Bloody prude.