Swimming is a skill that everyone should have, even if just for safety reasons. Beyond that, swimming is a great exercise and also a lot of fun. If you haven’t learned to swim yet, there is no time like the present. You may have watched professional swimmers, marveling at their skill and speed, and though reaching their heights of greatness can seem tough, it is still important that you learn to hold your own in the water.
Getting Started
One of your first questions is likely to be which stroke you should learn first. While you are welcome to start with any stroke you like, breaststroke is typically the easiest for beginners to learn. One of the key reasons for this is that breaststroke allows you to keep your head above water at all times. For many new swimmers, not being able to breathe freely leads to anxiety and even panic, and panicking is one of the worst things you can do in the water, as it increases your risk of drowning exponentially.
It is true that backstroke also allows you to keep your face out of the water, but in backstroke, you won’t be able to see where you are going. It takes practice and experience to know when the edge of the pool is looming, something that beginners don’t have. This leads us back to breaststroke.
Benefits of Breaststroke
In addition to being able to keep your face out of the water, breaststroke is a relatively natural motion, especially when compared to the more difficult butterfly stroke. In breaststroke, your arms and legs follow a similar sweeping motion in tandem, making it easy to get into a smooth rhythm.
Once you have mastered the basics of breaststroke, you can challenge yourself a bit more by executing the stroke with your face in the water, popping up for breath between strokes as needed. From there, you can go on to learn the rest of the standard competition strokes.
Start Taking Swim Lessons in Denver
Here at A-1 Scuba, we are proud to include swimming lessons among our services, in addition to our scuba diving certification programs. We would love to teach you how to swim at our indoor pool in Denver. This way, you can safely learn to swim at any time that is convenient for you, even if it is snowing outside.
We offer swimming lessons for all ages and skill levels. Even if you have never stuck so much as a toe in a pool before, we can help you learn to swim. Call now to get started.
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