Their parents didn’t swim. A traumatic event involving water in their childhood continues to haunt them. There wasn’t a pool where they grew up — or there was, but they couldn’t use it. They worry about their hair.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 37 percent of American adults don’t know how to swim. In 2007, says the CDCP, the nation’s clearinghouse for health information, there were 3,443 “fatal unintentional drownings” in the U.S., nearly 80 percent of whom were adults. The vast majority died because they didn’t know how to swim, a fact that’s scaring a growing number of non-aquatic adults into taking lessons.
Earlier this year, 36-year-old Rhonda Ingram of Raleigh and her family were vacationing at Myrtle Beach. Her 3-year-old and 1-year-old were bugging her to go swimming in the hotel pool; she said no because she knew she wouldn’t be any help if they got into trouble.
“I always thought if I put my face in the water, I’d drown,” says Ingram.
Which is why she and a half dozen other adult women are in the three-foot-deep end of Raleigh’s Optimist Park Pool, trusting instructor Roger Sharrett to put their assorted fears of the water to rest.
“It takes a lot of confidence and faith to be comfortable in water,” says Sharrett. That touches on what instructors say is the biggest challenge for people learning to swim later in life.
“Adults have more fear,” says Kelley Chisholm, who also teaches at Optimist. “Eighty-five to 90 percent of adults have had some traumatic event, an uncle or someone who threw them into a lake.”
“Adults have a bad experience and it tends to carry with them the rest of their life,” adds Craig J. Howard, aquatics director at the Stratford Richardson YMCA in Charlotte.
Which is why before his students even hit the water, Howard gets them to talk about why they haven’t learned to swim. It’s why he spends 30 minutes of the first lesson just getting them to stick their face in the water and blow bubbles.
That was key to Jebronis Knight, a 40-year-old student of Chisholm’s who was reluctant to even get in the water the first day.
“You could see the fear on my face,” says Knight. It took three lessons, but Knight managed to reach what instructors say is the tipping point for most adult learners: He’s relaxed enough, his breathing controlled to the point he can now float. His ability to float makes him confident of achieving his goal: to go snorkeling in the Caribbean on a cruise later this year.
Fear isn’t the only factor that’s held back some adults.
Charlie Spencer Lackey is an African-American who came of age in Anson County in the 1960s. There was a public pool in town, but even with the repeal of Jim Crow laws in the 1960s her family couldn’t afford the suddenly-imposed $500 membership. She took lessons in 1970 when she got to North Carolina Central University, but the instructor, who remained in street clothes on the pool deck, didn’t inspire confidence.
Health issues — rheumatoid arthritis and stomach issues — prompted her to try again. Since discovering the Optimist pool last October (initially water walking, now taking swim lessons) she’s dropped a dress size and her joint paint has diminished to the point she no longer needs a cane.
“I sleep better these days,” says Lackey, who is 59.
Access to year-round pools, says Howard of the Stratford Richardson YMCA, is a main reason why the lack of swimming skills is particularly acute in the African-American community. According to a 2010 survey commissioned by USA Swimming, 70 percent of African-American kids don’t know how to swim, compared with 58 percent of Hispanic kids and 40 percent of white kids.
Even when there is access to year-round pools such as the Stratford Richardson Y, the reality of $50 swim lessons is an economic deterrent, he says, which is why the Y offers financial assistance.
Howard says another concern is more challenging to overcome: “Minority females worry about their hair and what the [chlorinated] water will do to it.” (There is product, he assures them.)
But the main goal for most newbie adult swimmers is simply to become comfortable in the water.
“Once you learn how your body works in water, you learn that it doesn’t want you to drown,” says Candice Robinson. That, says the 32-year-old Raleigh swim student, was a big relief, though not the only one.
“Finding out you’re not the only 32-year-old person who doesn’t know how to swim, that was good to know.”

* * *

Learn to swim

Most pools that offer swim lessons for kids offer lessons for adults as well.

Charlotte area
Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation, 704-336-3483
YMCA of Greater Charlotte, (704) 716-6200.
YWCA Central Carolinas, (704)525.5770.

Triangle
Durham Parks and Recreation, (919) 560-4355.
Raleigh Parks and Recreation, (919) 831-6852.
YMCA of the Triangle, (919) 719-9622.

Photo: Is it time for you to ditch the floaty and dive in with the kids?

The post Adult swim: It’s never too late to learn appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

You’re a month into your new fitness program and you’re not seeing the results you expected: You are not alone.

And yet, you are.

“Every person is different,” says Sue Dissinger, Health and Wellness Director for the YMCA of Greater Charlotte. Your age, sex, genetics, personal physiology and environmental factors all combine to make your fitness challenge different from the guy on the treadmill next to you.

That may help to explain why, a month into your New Year’s resolve for a new you, it may feel like you still see too much of the old you. Perhaps the most common beef after a month of eating better and exercising? I’ve hardly lost any weight!

“Your entire body composition changes, not just the number on the scale,” says Logan Washburn, fitness director for the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont in Chapel Hill. “The way your clothes fit, for instance. Are they loser? Do they fit better? That’s something to pay attention to.”

If you’re exercising hard you may actually gain weight during the initial phase of a new fitness push, Washburn says. You’re burning fat and adding muscle; since muscle weighs more than fat, weight loss isn’t always a reliable initial indicator of success. However, since fluffy fat takes up more space than dense, compact muscle, loser clothing — especially around the waist — is.

If you’re a stickler for statistical evidence that your efforts are making a difference, check your percentage of body fat, which will decrease as muscle replaces fat.
You should also check your PH level, advises Danny Russo. Russo is a Charlotte-based personal trainer/fitness guru who travels the country with his RN wife, Janet, spreading the word of wellness to women through his FEW (Food, Exercise, Water) Program.

“The first thing I tell them,” Russo says when he appears before women at health clubs, hospitals, churches and community centers, “is to pee on this little strip of paper.” Because of our often unhealthy, chemically dependent diets, Russo says most of us have acidic body chemistry, which can open the door for a host of diseases and makes our bodies less efficient. Translation: fat and other unhealthy stuff tends to stick around.

Russo says he also instructs his clients to cut back on sodium and add potassium to their diets to take care of excess water retention. “You can drop 10 pounds of water and two dress sizes in just a few days,” he says.

And if you aren’t eating enough, you may be frightening your body into a circle-the-wagons mode. According to the Mayo Clinic, the average moderately active adult should consume at least 2,000 calories a day; even for a non-active person that total shouldn’t drop below 1,200. When the body isn’t getting enough fuel, it starts conserving and hangs on to as much fat as it can. “You don’t want to lose more than one or two pounds a week or your body goes into shock,” says Washburn.

A month into a new wellness program is also a good time for a gut check. Ask yourself:

• 

  Is the regimen you’ve chosen working for you? “There is no one program,” says Russo. Agreed, says Debra Delano. Four and a half years ago, the Charlotte resident weighed 257 pounds; a year later she was down to 157. Along the way she discovered that some of the exercise classes most popular with others — Zumba and yoga, for instance — weren’t for her. Instead, she’s become a disciple of weight lifting (“I lift a crazy amount of weight”) and line dancing, every Wednesday evening at Coyote Joe’s and often for 45 minutes, on her own, before work.

• Are you pushing yourself? Washburn says pain should never be part of your workout equation.  However… . “Exercise to where you’re slightly uncomfortable, to where you’re a little short of breath.” And, “It’s OK to be a little sore afterward.”
• Do you need a support system? Face it, left to our own devices it’s easy to blow off a trip to the gym after a long day of work. Enter a support network, be it a personal trainer, a group exercise class, or someone who’s going through the same thing you are. “Having someone to talk to on a regular basis can be important,” says Dissinger. “Someone who can help talk you through the barriers, about the feelings you’re having.”

If your long-term goal seems too far off, set short-term, weekly goals. “Tell yourself you’re going to go to the gym three days for 30 minutes, or you’re going to eat five vegetables a day,” says Washburn.

If there is a magic number in all this, says Washburn, it’s 12, as in weeks. “That’s how long it usually takes to break a habit and establish a new routine.

“Remember,” she adds, “it’s a lifestyle change. Your body’s changing. It takes time for your brain and body to kick in.”

Meanwhile, the Charlotte Y’s Dissinger says getting over your short-term hurdles may be as simple as sharing.

“The biggest thing is to not keep your feelings to yourself,” she says. Talking to someone, be it a  certified trainer or another sweaty comrade in the trenches, could be all it takes.

“There might be a simple fix to help you stay with it and get over the hump.”

The post When the going gets tough, keep going appeared first on GetGoing NC!.