Wondering if this is a problem for anyone else, any suggestions?

[Texasguy]

My understanding that people who tend to swim fast and complain about it are the people who cannot float well. That is, if their momentum goes down, they start to sink. After a while, they "learn" that they must go forward or they would drown. Thus, they cannot stop and rest on the water, they frantically make it to the other shore or back non stop, because they CANNOT lower their speed (as in the move SPEED where a bus HAD to continue going).

Learning to float and slowly glide through water gives that ability to swim slowly because one can float and then simply propel.

I took a scuba class with my coworker, he was a definition of this. He could swim but he had absolutely no skills on floating. When we were at the lake, it was hard to swim with him between the scuba classes. He would swim really fast, make it to the other shore, then would spend 5 mins grasping for air because he went too fast. He just couldn't slow down, his legs would start to sink, he would start to trash on the same spot. Thus, for him it was either trashing on the same spot or trashing while having some speed to that. He passed floating by grabbing to the side of the pool with his hand stretched out... Whatever..

Thus, is it possible you have the same problem? Can you float for an extended time and not just on your back? I timed myself, I could float without moving much for 45 mins in fresh water (NOT floating on my back, tried on my stomach and being vertical with some really slow movements), after that I got tired and started to feel like being pulled down. Floating on one's back is too easy and probably can be done for hours on end. However, it is a learned skill requiring practice and many don't have it (ok, if you are fat, maybe less practice).

 

[Jim Lapenta]

My grandfather (ex Navy) taught me to swim when I was 4 or 5 as I recall. Two years ago my Gf got me time with a professional swim coach as a Christmas gift. Even though I did well in my DM course and passed the YMCA Instructor exam I had some issues with the 400 yd swim. It was tiring. The 800 yd mask snorkel fin was easy.

It was a bear since I was not able to swim daily. Club memberships around here are too expensive and HS pool time did not work with my schedule. So practice was hit and miss.
That time with the coach changed everything. She saw, and pointed out, how inefficient my stroke was. Correcting it took a little effort as it had been ingrained over nearly 50 years.

I swim all laps with my students. I don't have the option of mask, snorkel, and fin instead of swimming. SEI does not allow it. In fact the requirements are 200 yd to start scuba training in addition to snorkeling and skin diving skills before I can put someone on scuba and 300 yd swim before OW cert.

 

[dmaziuk]

My understanding that people who tend to swim fast and complain about it are the people who cannot float well. That is, if their momentum goes down, they start to sink.

Works for staying neutral underwater while overweighted, but not when swimming laps. What is the same is you control your buoyancy with your lungs. Pushing your head up turns it into dead weight and you have to push harder to keep it up, so in a sense it's kind of similar, but it doesn't make you go fast. It just makes your stroke really inefficient as most of it goes to push you up instead of forward.

---------- Post added April 17th, 2015 at 05:18 PM ----------

That time with the coach changed everything. She saw, and pointed out, how inefficient my stroke was.

Yep. If you have to stop after every lap you need to get the basic "breathe, relax and enjoy" feel first. Once you can do 400 non-stop and it's "tiring", then you could look into stroke proficiency.

 

[Darnold9999]

Personally I worry about the fact that you want to take up diving and have a tendency to panic on the surface.

It is entirely possible that you will end up on the surface, with no air in your tank and need to swim for quite some time. Mostly you will have some kind of floatation, but if conditions get rough and/or your buddy needs support for some reason I can see that panic coming forward at a really bad moment.

For what it is worth I would suggest some swimming lessons and some time in the pool to the point where you not only can do the swim test but you are comfortable doing it.

I find the side stroke to be easiest for long swims. Crawl is something I only use if I am in a serious hurry to get somewhere which is just about never. Back stroke, side stroke and breast stroke all keep your face out of the water which might help re mitigating panic.

As an aside for most of my life I could not float at all. Had to tread water, or swim otherwise I would sink to the bottom. For fun used to panic life guards by sinking to the bottom of a pool and just lay there.

 

[Nemrod]

My understanding that people who tend to swim fast and complain about it are the people who cannot float well. That is, if their momentum goes down, they start to sink. After a while, they "learn" that they must go forward or they would drown. Thus, they cannot stop and rest on the water, they frantically make it to the other shore or back non stop, because they CANNOT lower their speed (as in the move SPEED where a bus HAD to continue going).

I do not completely disagree but I think it mostly they are trying to walk, climb, crawl out of the water due to a phobic response to having their head submerged. Wearing a scuba mask explains why the OP is "comfortable" underwater.

My problem with the story is that this behavior is a prelude to drowning. As a ex WSI lifeguard, I haver seen it enough both during swim instruction and while on duty.

N

 

[TMHeimer]

My understanding that people who tend to swim fast and complain about it are the people who cannot float well. That is, if their momentum goes down, they start to sink. After a while, they "learn" that they must go forward or they would drown. Thus, they cannot stop and rest on the water, they frantically make it to the other shore or back non stop, because they CANNOT lower their speed (as in the move SPEED where a bus HAD to continue going).

Learning to float and slowly glide through water gives that ability to swim slowly because one can float and then simply propel.

I took a scuba class with my coworker, he was a definition of this. He could swim but he had absolutely no skills on floating. When we were at the lake, it was hard to swim with him between the scuba classes. He would swim really fast, make it to the other shore, then would spend 5 mins grasping for air because he went too fast. He just couldn't slow down, his legs would start to sink, he would start to trash on the same spot. Thus, for him it was either trashing on the same spot or trashing while having some speed to that. He passed floating by grabbing to the side of the pool with his hand stretched out... Whatever..

Thus, is it possible you have the same problem? Can you float for an extended time and not just on your back? I timed myself, I could float without moving much for 45 mins in fresh water (NOT floating on my back, tried on my stomach and being vertical with some really slow movements), after that I got tired and started to feel like being pulled down. Floating on one's back is too easy and probably can be done for hours on end. However, it is a learned skill requiring practice and many don't have it (ok, if you are fat, maybe less practice).

IMO it all has to do with buoyancy. My legs sink like stones too. I was a sprint swimmer in H.S. 44 years ago. I can barely float on my back in SALT water let alone a fresh water pool. Everyone is different with buoyancy. There is even the odd fat guy that sinks and skinny one that floats better. My opinion is their is nothing much I can do to make my body more positively buoyant. Related to that is my opinion that physics dictates that if you are a "sinker", you will need more energy to swim successfully because a certain % of that energy goes toward keeping you afloat while you swim. Thus, you may wind up swimming faster than you might like to. Some may disagree--this has been discussed at length elsewhere.

---------- Post added April 17th, 2015 at 10:10 PM ----------

The student materials offer the same options.

OK. All I'm saying is I've assisted about 10 different OW course instructors and so far every one of them has dictated which version of the swim test to do. One had the class vote. None said "OK, each of you is on your own to do which ever one you want". Maybe it's just our shop that does it that way?

 

[RJP]

My understanding that people who tend to swim fast and complain about it are the people who cannot float well. That is, if their momentum goes down, they start to sink. After a while, they "learn" that they must go forward or they would drown. Thus, they cannot stop and rest on the water, they frantically make it to the other shore or back non stop, because they CANNOT lower their speed (as in the move SPEED where a bus HAD to continue going).

Learning to float and slowly glide through water gives that ability to swim slowly because one can float and then simply propel.

I took a scuba class with my coworker, he was a definition of this. He could swim but he had absolutely no skills on floating. When we were at the lake, it was hard to swim with him between the scuba classes. He would swim really fast, make it to the other shore, then would spend 5 mins grasping for air because he went too fast. He just couldn't slow down, his legs would start to sink, he would start to trash on the same spot. Thus, for him it was either trashing on the same spot or trashing while having some speed to that. He passed floating by grabbing to the side of the pool with his hand stretched out... Whatever..

Thus, is it possible you have the same problem? Can you float for an extended time and not just on your back? I timed myself, I could float without moving much for 45 mins in fresh water (NOT floating on my back, tried on my stomach and being vertical with some really slow movements), after that I got tired and started to feel like being pulled down. Floating on one's back is too easy and probably can be done for hours on end. However, it is a learned skill requiring practice and many don't have it (ok, if you are fat, maybe less practice).

Most people have never really been taught how to swim. Whatever lessons they had as a kid taught them how to get to the other side of the pool without drowning... which is not the same as swimming. What passes for swimming usually involves pushing DOWN and/or BACKWARDS on the water for the majority of the stroke cycle. Obviously this is counterproductive when one is trying to move forward.

Same is true of floating... which I'm glad to see you use that term instead of "treading water" because those are also two different things.

Many people refuse to believe this, but human beings who are significantly negatively buoyant with air in their lungs are few and far between. (We're basically bags of salt water.). Problem is, most are taught to tread water by kicking their legs and waving their arms around. This does very little but tire you out at best... and in many cases actually pulls the person under the water. (I'm not talking about water polo players doing a well-tuned eggbeater kick.) The problem for many of these people is not that they are NOT buoyant... but that they don't FEEL buoyant. They never have felt it. Because they don't feel buoyant... they believe they are sinking. So they flail even more. Their experience is that they are not buoyant... that's just not their reality.

A second issue - that you alluded to - that causes many people to believe that they are sinkers is that the human body's center of gravity is around the pelvis, while the center of bouyancy is around mid-chest. This is why it's "harder" to float on you back than with your legs below you.) So anyone trying to move forward with a less-than-efficient kick (esp a bicycle kick, which actually pull the legs downward anyway) is going to have their legs tend to rotate downward around the axis of their center of bouyancy. This wil feel to them as if they are slipping beneath the water. But it's not a downward force... it's a rotational force. When swimming, a more efficient kick will keep the legs from sinking. When floating, once the center of gravity and the center of bouyancy are in vertical alignment, the rotation... and the sensation of sinking... stops.

I don't think I've seen more than a handful of students in 40 years of swimming and 10 years of diving that couldn't be taught to float, nearly motionless at the surface through simple breath control and the occasional slow, efficient kick and/or hand sculling.

PS - many people who think they are sinkers are also usually wearing some baggy shorts or bathing suit which slows them and weighs them down. If that's you, suck it up and put on a pair of jammers for your swim/float test. You'll be surprised at the difference.

 

[UserNameBella]

Becoming a more confident swimmer is really important to becoming a safe diver. Being fast isn't the most important thing at all unless you want to DM. Being confident that you won't drown in deep water is the most important thing.

Most incidents occur on the surface. If you can't swim without becoming squirrely you are going to have a surface panic at some point. It isn't an if, it is a when. Scuba is not swimming, but the most dangerous portion of a dive is often on the surface. Please take your time and work through your issues before you get in open water. Becoming anxious on the surface of a swim during a big chop is not a good thing at all. I only put my eqquipment on in water. I jump in with a weight belt on sometimes, that takes an incredible amount of comfort and all divers should be that comfortable.

I am a horribly slow awkward swimmer, but for some reason I am never afraid or anxious about my swimming. This comes down to a lack of anxiety, not an incredible show of skill. Work on your comfort level. The rest will fall into place and you will be a safer diver. And the only way to work on your comfort level is to spend a lot of time in the water tooling around and enjoying yourself. Then the anxiety leaves. Please don't be that anxious guy on the surface.

 

[Texasguy]

IMO it all has to do with buoyancy. My legs sink like stones too. I can barely float on my back in SALT water let alone a fresh water pool.

You may need to arc your back more when you are floating on it. When I was pretty skinny, I had to arc to the point that the water was over my forehead, almost getting in my eyes, to find that balance point where the legs wouldn't sink. Though, in salt water it was not as extreme. Just want to say that you may not have found the optimal balance point.

 

[gr8jab]

Stupid observation maybe, but...

We were allowed to wear our wetsuit during our pool swim for PADI OW cert. This usually adds a bit of buoyancy.

If you were not wearing a wetsuit, maybe you would float/swim better if you did.