Funny Stuff

I was trying to slow my swimmer down during his breast stroke. Showing him that the leg and arm movement was not done all together because this would have a huge resistance in the water, so I asked him to do one arm stroke wait a second and then one leg stroke.

He stood there looking very puzzled and I waited patiently, thinking why can't he do this as he had just done both.

"Which arm shall I move first?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you said one arm stroke and I was wondering how to do this and what arm to move first" he explained.

"No, no. I didn't mean just move one arm, I meant do one stroke with your arms and wait a second then one stroke with your legs!". I fell about laughing at the thought of him doing one at a time.

 

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I was in the public pool with a learner (I did not have my own pool then). I wanted to get the swimmer to feel how good his kick was but I needed to get him down under the water to do this (in the shallow end).

He was ok in the water and readily agreed for me to hold him down gently so he did not bob up with the water pushing him up against his bouancy.

As I was pushing him down 2 women were talking standing up in the shallow end and saw me doing this, their eyes popping out!

When he came out of the water and said that he had felt exactly what I was explaining, I smiled at the 2 women and he looked round saw their amazement and said in his American southern drawl.

"Hey, don't worry about it, we're married, so its ok"

'Yeah" I said, "and he's rich too!"

We all laughed.

 

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One of our first pupils was a very muscular man, in fact he worked out regularly. He had a busy life style and often stayed in hotels that had swimming pools.

He wanted to learn how to swim. So we taught him how to put his head under the water and breathe out and how to be supported and that was ok.

When we tried to teach him how to glide he disappeared underneath the water and went right down.

We looked at each other in amazement!

This was our first sinker! No matter how hard we tried we couldn't get him up on top of the water.

"How am I going to get up to breath when I do my stroke" he asked.

He had such a dense frame with all his working out that it seemed impossible for him to get his body up!

I have learnt a lot since then and know now how to do this.

 

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One of my swimmers progressed very rapidly into a good front crawl stroke but she moved her legs like pistons when she swam causing her to be seriously out of breath.

We were in the public pool finishing of her course and I suggested that I held her legs whilst she got the understanding of how to swim without the kick.

I asked her to do it to me first, showing her that it would be ok and because she was very confident in the water she agreed to me holding her legs.

We were both very intent on what we were trying to achieve when someone came up to me and asked what on earth were we doing!

I explained and everything was ok, but a thought hit me.

I could just imagine in the local news. Swimming teacher holds the legs of her student whilst she was trying to swim!

We both had a good laugh at that.

She went on to do a very good stroke, the legs going like pistons was putting her whole body under strain making her very tense.

Once she had learnt how to do a 2 beat kick her stroke improved and she was able to control her breathing more effectively.

 

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I was teaching a very funny Irish man. He was a delight! Everything he was doing caused him to give a huge smile.

When he was able to be supported by the water I got him to glide over to the other side of the pool. He did this and got up out of the water looking amazed.

"How did I get over here?" he said.

"How do you think?" I asked.

"I dunno" he said, looking bemused, "I didn't think I did anything!"

I had a lot of fun teaching him.

He went home highly delighted.

 

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I was in the middle of the swimming course and was explaining how near the arm movement needed to be in relation to the body.

"Bring your arm out of your long pocket (demonstrating this but I had no pockets in my swimming costume) and keeping it close to the body move the arm up with the elbow high and bring your hand to the side of your goggles. Move your arm back trying to keep the same path and put your hand back in your long pocket"

He was wearing the Bermuda type shorts that had big pockets and proceeded to put his hand inside his right pocket.

I looked at him and asked what he was doing.

"You said to put my hand in my pocket" he said.

I fell about laughing so much that I could not explain what I meant.

Struggling to breathe I said, "No, I don't mean your literal pocket because how could you use your arm effectively to stroke with it locked away in your pocket?"

I had this mental image of this man trying to do the front crawl stroke with his hands in his pocket every time he finished his stroking arm.

I explained that I meant a figurative pocket.

"Oh," he exclaimed. "I thought that was a funny way to swim"

Well, that made me laugh all the more!

He has since moved on and is making wonderful progress. We often refer to this incidence and he laughs at it now, knowing how funny it was.