2 reasons why learning to swim is so frustrating specially as an adult and what to do

Learning any new skill can be challenging, but learning to swim can be specially frustrating. On this video we will break down why this happens and what you can do about it. If you are new here, welcome to our channel where every Friday we break down some aspect of swimming into its fundamental parts in a way that are easy to understand and to apply. If that sounds like something you are interested in, consider subscribing. The first reason why learning to swim well is frustrating is because it is very complicated. Unlike running which we evolved to do, swimming is something the human body is not specially designed to do. You might have heard or seen that babies are born knowing how to swim but as Jeffrey Wagener, a pediatric pulmonologist in Colorado says: “No. It's not true that babies are born with the ability to swim, though they have reflexes that make it look like they are. A reflex called the bradycardic response makes babies hold their breath and open their eyes when submerged in water” (more info here:) https://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-babies-are-born-with-the-ability-to-swim_10313062.bc So, we are not born knowing how to swim and if we want to swim our bodies need to be doing a lot of things at the same time that are entirely new if we don’t have any practice. Some of the things you need to be doing to swim front crawl for example is: Holding your breath for short periods of time, blowing bubbles through your nose, moving half of your head out of the water twisting your mouth and in a very limited space inhale enough air to replenish your lungs and hold it then blow more bubbles until the next breath. That is just to take a breath, I didn’t even talk about how your legs must move, how your knees need to be a little bent while going down but stretched while going up, the position of your ankles, your engaged core muscles, the movement of your arms, the rotation of your body back and forth and the synchronization of your kicks with your strokes. Our brain is not capable of learning that many new things in a short period of time. The reason, though some children seem to learn it more quickly than an adult has to do with neuroplasticity. Until recently it was believed that our brain pretty much stayed the same after childhood, but thankfully it is not true. The ability for our brain to change and adapt to outside stimuli is present throughout our whole lives. While we do have more of this ability in childhood, you can still learn how to swim if you know what to focus on and your are patient enough to practice. But another problem adults have is that we have misconceptions or we have been misinformed and we don’t know what to focus on first. Before we enter the pool we must likely already have misconceptions about what swimming well must look like and feel like. For example, we might think that the faster you spin your arms the faster you will move forward. But that is simply not true as we can see here. In conclusion, learning how to swim well is frustrating mainly because of two reasons; the first is that it takes time to learn all the little sub-skills, even if you understand them your brain must rewire itself to do it. The second is because of past experiences or lack of information that prevents us from prioritizing the most important aspects of the sport, first. My suggestion then is, to subscribe click the bell icon, watch all of our videos, visit our webpage, buy a swim cap and most importantly go to the pool (with your new swim cap) and start learning one little thing everyday. ok, the swim cap is not essential, but Be patient, be smart, be persistent and SWIM FAST! Thanks for watching! See you next time! 빠르게 헤엄치세요! SWORDFISH Program https://skillswimming.com/swordfish/ Skills NT Shop: https://skillswimming.com/swimming-shop/ Subscribe to our email list: http://bit.ly/SubscribeSkillsNT Our favorite Amazon products: http://bit.ly/SkillsNAmazon Become our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4140610 Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/skillsntalents Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SkillsNTalents Thanks for watching! Swim fast!