2016: I find it amusing that every year since four years ago at least, "learning to swim" had made it into my Top 3 new-year resolutions, but year by year it remained unconquered. Not that I had any phobia with water. Used to, when I felt claustrophobic putting my head underwater, but I had long since gotten over that. I had had a few friends try to teach me to swim but I never seemed to get the hang of it. The kicks, the arm strokes, the breathing, remembering to relax--there were too many things to do at the same time.
So after several failed attempts to learn by watching YouTube, I finally decided to get professional help. I searched for swimming classes and stumbled upon one that gave private lessons for a reasonable price. I also got to choose to have a female instructor. It was RM700 for 2 persons for 5 classes (the price is slightly higher if you are without a partner). I liked that there was a limited number of lessons, because I felt there was sort of a guarantee that they would make sure you would be able to swim at the end of the last session. I was a bit skeptical with the cheaper schools where the classes were continuous and you had to pay monthly, because they probably wouldn't mind having you stay longer and pay more. Yes, a skeptical bitch, I am.
Our swimming instructor was a petite Indonesian lady who used to be a gymnastics coach. She had VERY high patience, although we almost stretched it to the limit when we showed minimal progress after every class. During the classes, the most important thing I managed to learn that I failed to learn before was how to coordinate my legs and my arms, and my breathing. I even got to learning the crawl, but didn't have enough time to get it right. So I had to be happy with doing the breaststroke. Since the pool was only 4 ft deep, I didn't get to properly learn to tread water. At the end of the 5 sessions, I was able to swim from one end of the pool to the other, but I still found myself tiring easily (there must be some techniques I didn't do right) and I still felt no confidence swimming in deep water.
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| My swimming partner |
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| With my instructor |
