Swim Lesson
“Do you have swim lessons?” I ask the receptionist at the Silverthorne Rec Center.
“Yes, of course. How old is your child?”
“Erm, no. It’s for me.”
To be a good teacher, you have to be a good student. I believe this deeply. I love it when the ski (or river) boot is on the other foot, and I can notice how I learn best and then reverse engineer those learnings into my own teaching and coaching. I’m also obsessed with the beginner’s mind. The lack of pressure, the growth spurts, and the feeling of making progress.
So, as I prepare for the upcoming kayak season in dry, landlocked Colorado I start thinking: how can I become a better boater without getting in my boat? The answer, perhaps obviously, is to get in the water.
I am standing on the pool deck, adjusting my brand-new goggles, still pasted over with protective film. I can see my instructor chatting with one of the lifeguards. It’s ten AM. Some tattooed locals simmer in the hot tub, trading notes on backcountry lines. A few young moms with toddlers, floaty wings flapping, laugh in the kiddie pool. And then there’s me.
After introductions, the instructor asks me to perform the dreaded assessment.
“Let me see how you swim,” she says.
I oblige, lowering myself into the pool and showcasing what I call my “half-ass crawl” and “mom breaststroke.”
“Are you a mom?” she asks.
“Nope.”
“Well, I am, and that’s not how I swim.”
As we move into a series of drills designed to help me not drown immediately in open water, I realize something: I am that self-deprecating student, the one who jokes about their incompetence to mask insecurity. It’s a form of self-protection, an attempt to lower expectations before I’ve even started. But in doing so, I reveal a lot about myself—some stereotyping, some self-limiting, and, most importantly, a general resistance to my own willingness to struggle.
And yet, struggling—sucking at things and then sucking at them a little less—is literally my life’s philosophy. It’s at the heart of every lesson I teach, whether helping get skiers out of a wedge or paddlers cross their first eddy line.
My face is submerged, nose toward the tile, a buoy wedged between my thighs. To the stuffed-animal monkey hanging from the fake palm tree, I must look like a hog-tied homicide victim, a floating outline of a body. My instructor tells me to point my elbows toward the ceiling, engage my triceps, and move my forearms like “windshield wipers on a school bus” to pull myself forward.
I come up gasping for air, having moved about six inches.
“You have a sculling draw in kayaking, no?” she asks. “It moves the boat sideways?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well, you’re sculling with your body now. The purpose of this is to use your body like a paddle. Your whole body is a paddle.”
BINGO! The “aha” moment, beloved by teachers, happens. A million neurons fire. The teaching for transfer—the connection between what I already know and what I am learning—has occurred.
I climb out of the pool, completely elated and addicted to swimming. I can’t wait to come back tomorrow and practice all the drills she’s given me. This is exactly the experience I want for my students. Because learning is about connecting the dots. It’s about being willing to expose your insecurities so you can get to that breakthrough moment. Whether it’s skiing, kayaking, or swimming, it’s all about trusting the process—and the willingness to expose your vulnerabilities and start as a beginner again.