By Kate Coiro, The Patriot Ledger
To read the original piece, please visit the Patriot Ledger’s website
Wearing a black swimsuit and metallic green goggles, Bo Hunter took a deep breath and submerged herself in the water. A few seconds later, she reemerged, took another breath and went back under. Up and down, up and down, for nearly a minute.
Many of her fellow 36-year-olds might find the exercise unimpressive, but Hunter was smiling afterward. It was a sign of improvement.
“I was afraid of the water,” the Quincy resident said.
Since the second week of February, Hunter has been taking adult swim lessons at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy.
“Before taking this class, I couldn’t even put my face in the water, but now I feel more comfortable,” she said.
Hunter, who moved to the U.S. from Thailand eight years ago, belongs to a population of non-swimmers that Ken Berardi, the YMCA’s aquatics director, said is large in Quincy.
It is also large throughout the country. An American Red Cross poll in 2014 found that 54 percent of Americans either can’t swim or do not have all the basic skills that could save their lives in the water.
Half the men and women who attend Berardi’s beginner adult swimming class grew up without access to a swimming pool, he said. Now, as adults, they want to learn to swim, often to keep pace with what their children have learned to do.
The other half of his students had a traumatic experience with water as children, Berardi said. He recalled one student who sank instead of floated when his father threw him in the water to teach him how to swim.
YMCA spokeswoman Lauren Dell’Olio said many adults think swimming classes are just for children.
“It’s staggering how many adults don’t know how to swim and want to learn but don’t know there are classes for adults,” she said.
Valerie Sturtevant, marketing manager at the South Shore YMCA, said the two Y campuses, one in Quincy and the other in Hanover, offer a combined 10 adult swim classes, and each has three to eight participants. The number of classes changes from season to season, depending on interest, she said.
Berardi said he structures classes around students’ individual goals. After a series of “comfort exercises” – which are designed to help participants relax, like blowing bubbles or kicking – Berardi has students practice breathing and specific swim strokes.
Huyen Nguyen, 48, of Milton, said that before taking a Y swim class she had tried to learn how to swim a few times, “but it never worked.”
“I always wanted to learn how to swim because I have kids who always make me nervous at the beach,” she said.
In 1984, Nguyen moved to the U.S. from Vietnam, where her family lived far from the water, she said. After a few weeks of lessons at the Y, Nguyen has improved, though swimming still makes her nervous, she said.
Zaima Tajudin, 41, is learning to swim in the same pool as her youngest son, Affen, 7. Their classes meet at different times.
“I didn’t really have the opportunity to learn during my childhood,” Tajudin, who grew up on a remote island in Malaysia, said. After trying to teach herself in college, the Braintree resident encountered a different problem.
“The incorrect technique had become a bad habit,” she said.
Bernie Dickman, a YMCA swim instructor, said that’s common among adults who learn to swim late in life.
“They’ve had a lot more time to work on bad habits,” she said. “Kids don’t have time to develop bad habits.”
To reverse those habits, Berardi fills each 45-minute class with repetitive exercises and drills to foster muscle memory.
Winter adult swim classes will end the second week of April. Registration for spring classes will begin April 1. Information is available at ssymca.org.
“It’s never too late to get in the pool,” Berardi said.
— Article written by Kate Coiro, The Patriot Ledger
To read the original piece, please visit the Patriot Ledger’s website