Things I had not thought off, before my swimming lessons

 For the first time in my life, I started taking swim lessons this year (Feb 2025)

After several hours of swimming (lessons I mean: I still cant swim) I started realizing that what is shown in movies makes it really hard for the actors doing the swim scenes.

1) swim caps: The lovely lady actresses with long blonde (or black) hair swimming in the sea/pool or river in the movies and TV shows, swim WITHOUT the caps. I find it impossible to swim without the cap as my hair gets in my eyes and if I stop to push my hair back I start sinking as I have stopped kicking! And, I actually have pretty short hair and not long enough to really block my eyes! With swim cap, I am definitely not photgenic!

2) Swim goggles:  Without the swim goggles on, I close my eyes when swimming. Period. Even if I try to keep my eyes open, I can't see much or I can't keep my eyes open for long in the water. ..Barely a couple of seconds. 

Also, without the swim goggles, my eyes turn  red (due to chlorine?) and it takes hours after stepping out of the pool for my eyes to stop being red.

 When I wear the swimming goggles, as I often do, they leave an ugly mark round my eyes as they are tight. I look quite awful after I take off the swim goggles, until the marks disappear. Definitely not photogenic!  These marvellous actors swim with eyes open in the water, unprotected by goggles and look gorgeous! How the hell they do that!

3) The two old swim suits I have make my belly look awfully fat! The new one I got from Joe Fresh, improved my looks but one  b... had popped out when I was doing the back stroke and I did not realize that ! The male coach, treading water next to me was probably too embarrassed to tell me and the female coach, at the other end of the pool came running to tell me to pop my b back into my bikini top! 

This incident made me realize that the swim suits and bikinis which look gorgeous in the photos are impractical for swimming! Parts of your body will pop out of the clothing piece, because of a range of different things:  strong currents in the water, with the different kicks and arm pulls you make, etc. For example, my skirt keeps floating up if I am near one of  water return jets. My thin strap constantly falls off my shoulder and I have to keep pushing it up. (Though it is the right size)

4)  I enjoyed as much as anything else, the swimming scenes in movies, the water scenes, boating, etc but  had not given much thought to these issues...until I started my swim lessons. I now realize that what looks so damn easy and effortless (swimming) is actually hard: one needs strength and skill which is 'not naturally present in me' but I need to practice, practice, practice, do exercises to improve my strength, change my diet and also change my thinking, behaviour and emotions! I need to stop worrying that I look like a fool and others are mocking me and focus on learning the skill; I need to be disciplined enough to reach the pool on time, not miss classes, etc. I need to pay attention and 'obey' instead of trying to do something else (thinking I know better and what the coach says will not work)

5) Only after my swim lessons did I learn so many facts (I have been seeing youtube videos and reading up a lot after I started the swim lessons).  Before my swimming, I did not know facts such as 

1) Human bodies float! They don't sink!( I always thought if I drown, I will be at the bottom of the pool because my body is heavy)

2)  Even though I have seen oil float on water, all my life (when I am cooking) , I still think of oil being heavier than water. It's only now I know that  I realize water is more dense than any oil. ( at the back of my mind, I still can't get rid of the idea that oil is heavier or denser especially castor oil, which is so bloody viscous!)

3) I did not know that scuba divers have weights which make them go down; that it would be impossible for them to go down without those weights.  I did not realize the extent of buoyancy of our bodies! To my 'previous' thinking, only wood and light plastics float. 

I am really enjoying my swim lessons and I hope I will be able to swim a length of the swimming pool in a year's time at least. This is one more reason, I am grateful to moving to Canada. In my home country/town, there are very few pools, too far from where I live and there are more things to put me off swimming than inspire me to learn swimming.