Swimming Backwards?

Is this true? You wouldn’t think so but somehow it was for me. If you take away all the doctors appointments and physical therapy I had to do to get myself to where I am, I don’t think you can discount the other avenues my family found to help me. In this case, it was swimming.

I grew up in a beach town so learning to swim was imperative. I won’t lie. I was scared to do it, scared to try it. And all I was doing was swimming in a kiddie pool- one that went no more than 2 ft deep. Not only that but I didn’t like working with my instructor-I wanted my parent. I had to be three or four years old and I was not shy about being stubborn. And if anything I was going to learn how to swim in my own way.

I can’t tell you which parent was with me that day but my sister and I were learning how to swim and they put me in the water- and in a way I can’t explain, I started swimming freestyle BACKWARDS! My guess now is that I had the motions down but not the momentum. So maybe I really wasn’t moving at all. I can’t tell you how this happened (nor do I think I could ever repeat the results). But this is what happened.

The first couple tries this happened until my instructor decided to switch tactics. She brought in a kick board and swimming bougie for your legs. The next few lessons we went though alternating between using only one part of my body at a time. This allowed me to build up my muscle mass in those areas but also gain strength with swimming.

When I had to put it all together, that was a different story! It took me probably a few more weeks to get the motions down. And honestly going underwater at first terrified me because I was never sure if I would be able to catch my breath easily when I was moving. An interesting fear, I know. But this circumstance worried me because it was another where I had to rely on my right side for help. Whenever I’ve always had to catch myself I have defaulted on my left side because I was always sure I could catch myself. This is true even today.

But swimming didn’t give me that option. I had to almost blindly trust that I would be able to catch my breath and that my body would build up the strength to propel me forward in a pool or ocean rather than backwards. Not an easy task but over time this did happen to an extent. More on that another time…