Everyone: “What do you mean you can’t swim?”
Me: “I just can’t, it’s a bone density thing…”
Yes, I know. For a long time, I had convinced myself that the fact I never learned how to swim was down to my bone density. Growing up, I was always the girl who got picked first for school games. I was fast, stealthy and tenacious. I loved water, I lived near the beach in Lisbon, so by the time I got to my teens, the concept of not being good at swimming was as confusing to my big-headed self as it was to everyone else.
I had swimming lessons in primary school but after moving to the UK in my early teens, I didn’t find myself near a pool or the sea as often. I fell straight into the “Black people can’t swim” stereotype, and I hated it. You've probably heard the statistics – ‘95% of Black UK adults don’t swim' – which only work to encourage this trope. But it is more nuanced than the figures suggest.
So, why are the stats against us? I often question why myself, my siblings and many other athletic people in my life struggled with swimming. Studies have shown that bone density is significantly greater in Black people than white people, but it's up for debate whether this actually impacts ability to swim.
The reasons are more social and cultural than they are genetic.
Afro hair and pool or sea water are not the most harmonious of combinations. If you have relaxed hair, chlorine can have a negative reaction to the sodium hydroxide in your relaxer. If you wear your hair natural, then the shrinkage is real. If your hair is braided or sitting under a wig, getting it wet regularly is a recipe to ruin styles that take hours to maintain.
I hear you: excuses, excuses. But for Black women, hair is important. When quizzing many of my Black friends, that is a factor that has heavily contributed to their decision to not learn how to swim later in life.
What's more, although swimming is part of the curriculum, Black students have reported a discriminatory environment during swimming lessons in UK schools. “You were literally teased or hazed by your non-Black peers about being Black and being in a swimming pool,” says Lorraine, 32. “I felt so much pressure trying to learn because I felt like all their eyes were on me. Plus, in my experience, swimming instructors only focused on the good kids, so I was very much just left behind.” Her experience is not an isolated one, I and many of my Black peers didn't feel like swimming lessons were a welcome environment for us at school. Is it any wonder we give up learning as soon as we leave the education system?
It's clear that swimming culture is not fully embraced by nor embedded in Black communities. So, this year, as I approached 30, I wanted to invest time in a sport that is widely under-represented when it comes to Black people (especially Black women). Plus, I’m a snowboarder (another sport where Black people are severely under-represented) and I want to surf in my off-season. So, I took the plunge (no pun intended).
Here is how I did it:
My lessons were at Third Space in Canary Wharf, London. It was a no brainer. Close to my apartment, so it's a short commute. Impeccable facilities – the swimming pool is airy with a great view (giving you that rooftop-like, indoor outdoor-pool feel). Not to mention how patient the instructors there are. In fact, let's start there. Tip numero uno: get you an instructor with the patience of a saint.
Going into my first lesson, I felt confident. Alex, my instructor, reminded me that I was lucky because I didn't have to overcome that fear of water, I simply needed to try – hard. The water was crisply cold. I hate cold water, but I submerged my whole body and held my breath for as long as I could.
We started off easy and Alex did not let me slack. “Slow down, make sure you complete the full stroke before you start the next one,” he urged me as I rushed through my front stroke. I was desperate to reach the end of the lap, without realising that the rushing made me more tired, and made it much harder to get to the other side. Learning to swim is a marathon, not a sprint.
My legs felt like jelly leaving the pool the first few lessons, but that also faded away as I got better and learned how to distribute the force through my body and as I became a more efficient swimmer.
Tip numero dos: be patient with yourself. Repetition and perseverance are key when learning how to swim, and eventually it will all become muscle memory, and you won’t have to do as much of the work.
If you're learning to swim later in life like me, try to forget the whole ‘age’ thing too; it's only going to hinder your progression. As I kept mentioning that I’m approaching 30, Alex tells me. “It’s never too late to learn. I’ve taught people of all ages to swim and age has never been an issue,” he tells me. “Restrictions in mobility can make certain parts challenging as you age, sure. Especially the breaststroke kick that requires a high degree of hip and ankle mobility. Although there are ways to work around it and mobility normally improves with time.”
I progressed way quicker than I’d imagined. By lesson three, I was comfortably front crawling four lengths non-stop. I learned how to switch from front stroke to backstroke within a session and then we swiftly moved on that dire breaststroke.
By lesson seven, I had it down. It wasn’t as straightforward as any other skills I’d learned to that point. The heel, straight leg, kick, frog, coordination would throw anyone off, but it soon enough became muscle memory.
I found that the smoother I made the movement, the less energy I wasted, the higher I floated and the quicker I got to the end of the lap. When it all started clicking together, it was a major eureka moment. Alex was stoked for me, and so was I.
“Swimming allows you to be comfortable in and around water," Alex told me one session, "and able to do other activities like scuba diving, surfing and kayaking. It’s also a great form of cardiovascular exercise and helps reduce stress.”
He was so right. I still can’t get over how therapeutic I found those lessons. I felt like I was in a utopian distant world where my only worry was to make it through the end of the session without drowning. I left all my problems, worries, and stresses in the Third Space changing rooms. For an hour a day, my ADHD brain focused solely on one thing. It’s a level of peace and harmony that is hard to recreate.
But mainly, I realised that my body is capable of doing just about anything it puts its mind to, no matter how ‘later in life’ society dubs me. I’m not quite Michael Phelps just yet. But now, I can get from one end of the pool to the other, multiple times. So surely that means I’m halfway there, right?
