Significant errors in traditional swimming instruction have actually prevented swimming students from becoming safe in water and by extension, contributed to the high number of drownings in the U.S. and around the world.

1. Swimming students and parents presume that learning to swim means becoming safe in deep water. The main swimming instruction agencies presume that learning to swim means learning strokes. The two groups, which should be a match, are instead a disconnect. No one is talking about it.
   Parents may presume that learning to swim also means learning strokes, so some of their expectations may be met. But the safety requirement is missing. Learning to swim must include becoming safe in water over one’s head.Parents who can swim know their kids should remain in lessons until they are independent in water over their heads. Parents who can’t swim–and half of adults can’t swim–think that if their kids can do a stroke across the pool, they are safe in deep water. This is not the case. It’s a dangerous belief. Parents are walking around with this belief firmly entrenched. Kids leave swimming lessons before they can swim.
2. Teaching adults who are afraid how to be safe in deep water by trying to teach them strokes virtually never works. Adults are too focused on staying alive. Eighty percent of drownings in America are by adults (CDC 2020). In the case of adult students, their expectations of lessons are thwarted. They don’t get what they paid for or expected. Over time, they become disillusioned with what learning to swim means and whether they can be successful.While learning strokes makes unafraid children safe in deep water, it is not because they’re taught how to be safe. It’s because children “read between the lines” and deduce that the water holds them up, which they must know. Adults who are fearful in water don’t believe that water holds them up. They need to be taught. The teaching process must keep them feeling safe at all times, or they will not learn. Instructors seem unaware that they don’t teach deep water safety and that students can’t learn if they don’t feel safe.
3. The agencies teach that a correct float, which is one of the keys to learning to swim, is horizontal. However, many people are supported by the water (float) in a diagonal or vertical position, which are also correct. Typically, instructors tell such floaters to make their bodies horizontal which requires them to raise their legs, causing their faces to submerge and leading to frustration and failure. Some instructors don’t teach floating at all.

4. The swim test given to “swimmers” to demonstrate that someone is safe in water fails to demonstrate safety. Many people believe they can swim because they pass the test. The test allows nervous “swimmers” to pass by floating for only one minute. Nervousness in deep water is not safe. Someone who’s afraid in deep water can’t swim. Someone who can swim is not afraid in deep water. An afraid / nervous swimmer is closer to panic — the biggest danger in the water — than someone who is peaceful in deep water.

With fundamental misinformation being taught by instructional agencies that are synonymous with learning to swim, and a public that believes the misinformation because it’s never been publicly called into question, adults who want to learn to swim and parents who want their kids to be safe in deep water are at a loss for finding reliable success — and they don’t know it.

There has not been a significant decrease in the drowning rate in the U.S. in over twenty years according to the National Drowning Prevention Alliance. Dozens of organizations pronounce the worthy mission of reducing drowning. How many of them espouse swimming lessons which mandate peaceful independence in deep water?

Swimming instructors, swim schools, and instructional agencies might ask themselves, “Why do many of our adult students quit?” “Why are people tense even though we tell them to relax?” “Why are some people not progressing?” “Why can’t they do the same things in deep water that they can do in shallow water?” “Why don’t we teach people in deep water?” This introspection is necessary to make the simple changes essential to teaching people to be safe in deep water and ending preventable drowning. And since American learn-to-swim traditions have been exported around the world, a change in the U.S. will have a positive ripple effect globally.

What are the simple changes necessary? They can be found in previous blogposts, on this website, and in my book, podcast and video. They will be featured in our Masterclass February 25, 2023.