My swimming lessons are always about so much more than just swimming. At the beginning of the class I always ask the children if they have any news. Yesterday for one group, their news was that they were studying the stone age at school. One little chap told me that they had read a story in which a stone age boy mentioned that he was living in the stone age. ‘But our teacher told us that is an anachronism.’ I had to go home and look it up. Turns out he is right. He is five. He’s also a very good swimmer.
history of swimming
The Submarine and other swimming tricks
I am always looking for ways to make my swimming lessons more fun so I try to include tricks and games. This is for several reasons: it makes the experience more enjoyable for everyone involved, including me; people learn more when they try new things; being a competent and confident swimmer involves more than just swimming from a to b.
So I was rather delighted to read that swimming star Annette Kellermann, aka the Diving Venus, was advocating swimming games one hundred years ago. In her 1918 book How to Swim she recommends various interesting activities including: The Steamboat, the Rolling Log, The Corkscrew, Mothers Old Charm, Spinning the Top, The Bicycle, The Wheel, Two Man Somersault, The Pendulum, The Submarine and one which I have to admit I have not tried called ‘Bound Hand and Foot.
I am completely with Kellermann when she says
‘Swimming must not be taken too seriously.’ but that it should be a joyful experience. although she does also warn that some of the tricks she describes are not for the ‘raw amateur‘.
Imagine my surprise when I looked closely at this photograph taken on Boxing Day and realised that there is someone executing what I imagine is a full blown ‘submarine‘ with leg as periscope.
Face in the water
Many people tell me before they come to their fist swimming lesson that they can’t put their face in the water. So far every single adult I have ever taught has been able to do it within about five minutes of arriving at the lesson. Some people have had a fear of this for years but for some reason, and with a little bit of guidance they are always able to do it. I am not sure exactly how many people I have taught but it is certainly in the hundreds.
Children are quite a different matter. They will not put their faces in the water until they are ready for it. This may take five minutes or it could take several months or longer. You absolutely cannot persuade a reluctant child to do it if they don’t want to. This is one of the main ways in which teaching children differs from teaching adults.
To learn to swim you do really need to be able to put your face in the water. This is a simple matter of physics. Our bodies are less dense than water, but only slightly. That means that most people float (there are some very rare exceptions). But any part of the body that is held out of the water is heavy. This means that you cannot float without doing something. If your head is out of the water you have to move your arms or legs to keep you afloat. If your face is in the water you don’t have to do anything.
It takes time to learn what the resistance of the water feels like, how to ‘catch’ the water, and how much effort you need to use to propel yourself forward, or to keep your head out of the water. Once you have learned to swim it is easy to swim with your face out of the water, but to learn to swim this way is not impossible, but quite difficult.
As I say I have never had any problem at all persuading any adult, however scared they are, to put their face in the water. This is never a stumbling block. But there is a point where many people get stuck and that is in allowing themselves to float. Many people find it very difficult to let go and allow the water to hold them.
Watermarks
I am honoured to have a short story included in this anthology. It is out on 8th May. Edited by Tanya Shadrick and Rachel Playforth. Cover design by Neil Gower. Published by Pells Pool Lewes and Frogmore Press.
‘If you are going to swim, wear a water bathing suit.’
‘There are two kinds of bathing suits, those that are adapted for use in the water, and those that are unfit for use except on dry land. If you are going to swim, wear a water bathing suit. But if you are merely going to play on the beach and pose for your camera friends, you may safely wear the dry land variety.’
- How to Swim (1918), pp. 47–48 Annette Kellerman
Here are some of my great aunts and uncles, ‘posing for their camera friends’ in New York in 1919.
In those days, when seaside bathing was becoming fashionable, the thing to do apparently was to sit at the edge of the beach and let the breaking waves wash over you. The activity was considered daring as the waves would sweep the ladies bathing dresses upwards, revealing their legs. Here my great aunts seem to be doing just that.
Swim at home
It seems you don’t need a pool to learn how to swim. You can learn at home, as long as you have an ordinary piano stool. Here is some useful advice from 1937.
F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in their bathing suits
F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were keen swimmers and divers. 
Swallow dives
Photograph from the Dutch illustrated magazine ‘Het Leven’ (bathing issue), 1937.
You used to see a lot of swallow dives, but nowadays you hardly ever do. This is partly because most pools have got rid of their diving boards and many are not deep enough.
It is a shame, but I fear the swallow, or swan dive has had its day. It seemed to coincide with the era of the Lido, of Busby Berkeley swimming extravaganzas, of Esther Williams, Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) and sweeping art deco architecture.
I am just old enough to have benefitted from the end of the swallow dive era and remember seeing many beautiful dives executed from the high diving board at our local pool. I remember that moment when the diver seems to hang in the air, swooping upwards for a second with arms outstretched before bringing them together over the head and hopefully entering the water with the smallest of splashes. I even on one spectacular occasion saw someone do one of these dives off a bridge into the Thames at Twickenham.
I never did one myself. I didn’t have the courage or the skill. It seemed to be something that men and boys did to show off. I don’t know how they learned, I am quite sure most of them were never taught. They just plucked up their courage and copied one another.
Some of them were dreamers…
This photo taken in 1910 is by Jaques-Henri Lartigue – a wonderful photographer, who was ‘discovered’ at the age of 69, although he had been painting and taking photographs all his life.
One of my first ever swimming pupils was a friend. He had never learned to swim as a child mainly because his childhood had been disrupted and he had moved around a lot and maybe no one had ever taken him. I didn’t really teach him much, just went swimming with him during one very hot summer. We went to the local pool which was a beautiful open-air Lido, now demolished. It had a sweeping Art Deco staircase leading to the changing rooms, two fountains and pink paving stones surrounding the pool. It was beside the Thames just opposite Eel Pie Island. There was and is a footbridge over to the Island. The bridge is arc shaped, like a concrete rainbow with metal railings on each side. Once after we had been swimming we were sitting down by the river when we saw a man walk up to the top of the bridge, climb over the railings and execute a beautiful swallow dive into the Thames
‘How to swim’
Annette Kellermann
‘Though it seems paradoxical, one must have absolute abandon and at the same time minute precision, to become a good swimmer.’
How to Swim – Annette Kellermann 1918
mindful swimming 