Learning to swim as an adult, with nobody watching

The reason most adults never learn has nothing to do with ability

Adults who cannot swim are usually not people who tried and failed. They are people who never got the chance as children, or who had one bad experience that ended the whole thing, and then found that the older you get the harder it is to be a beginner in public.

That last part is the real obstacle. Being the beginner in a public pool, in front of people you do not know, is a lot to ask of anyone — so most people quietly decide to deal with it another year.

So we come to you instead

A lesson in a private backyard is just two people in a pool. Nobody is queueing for the lane, nobody is watching from the side, and there is no changing room to walk through. If you would rather not tell anyone you are doing this, you do not have to.

If you do not have a pool, that is usually workable — a relative's pool, a friend's, or your building's. The lesson needs to reach water, not a particular address.

Where we start

Wherever you want to. For a lot of adults the first lesson is spent standing in water they can stand up in, getting used to putting a face in and breathing out — and that is a real lesson, not a warm-up for the real one.

From there it is floating, then floating while moving, then a stroke. The order is the same as it is for children. The difference is that you get to say when you have had enough of something, and your instructor will listen.

Why people usually get in touch

• You want to get in the water with your children or grandchildren instead of watching from a chair.
• There is a holiday, a cruise or a beach trip coming and you would rather not spend it on the sand.
• Something happened when you were young — a pool, a lake, someone who thought throwing you in would work — and it never got undone.
• You can swim well enough to get across, but it is exhausting and you would like it not to be.
• You are training for a triathlon and the swim leg is the one you are avoiding.

If you are afraid of water

Say so when you book, and say so again in the pool. It is far more common than people assume — a good share of the adults we teach start exactly there — and it changes how the lesson is run rather than whether we can teach you.

Nothing will happen that you have not agreed to first. No surprises, no going deeper than you expected, nobody letting go of you without telling you. Fear that gets respected tends to fade a lot faster than fear that gets overridden.

Lessons and pricing

Adults usually prefer the longer sessions — there is no attention span issue and more time in the water is simply more progress. Prices are the same as for children and are listed on the pricing section. No packages and no contracts, and your first lesson can be booked on its own — so you can find out how you feel in the water before committing to a month of it.