What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness | Hacker News Reader

What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

nytimes.com

220 pointsmitchbob123 comments

Just finished swimming a race from Alcatraz to shore, it's just the best high. I do tons of endurance sports, but swimming is the most reliable in yielding that euphoric feeling.

I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to focus on breathing on a set schedule (analogous to vipassana techniques). I'm moving my whole body in a way that requires balance, complex coordination and attention to what my body is feeling (analogous to body-scans, yoga). If you're not listening to music it's also a little like sensory deprivation, there's just neutral water rushing sound.

I know running and biking can get there for some (myself included occasionally), but on a pool swim there's nothing to worry about other than the occasional turnaround at the wall. No obstacles, no dodging others on the sidewalk, no traffic. You're in a controlled, safe environment.

That or maybe it's just the hypoxia ;)

That just gave me an idea of circular swimming pool.

They exist and they are very annoying compared to regular old 50m lanes. You end up having to constantly overcompensate to one side (obviously) but also you suddenly have to either burn in a constant bias to your technique (bad) or be constantly aware of the boundaries, which ruins the normal flow of pool swimming. They are fun for families and kids who only ever do one or a half round, but if you like swimming just stick to traditional pools.

I once saw a documentary about a fish farm where they had tanks where fish were forced to swim in circles. Probably not the most fish friendly environment.

How about a pool in a rotating orbital space station? Just keep swimming forwards and slightly uphill :) Just don't lose the fake G or you could be the first person to drown in space.

It’s never uphill though, while rotating “halo” looks like it bends upwards, force-wise it feels flat.

That was a plot point in the movie "Passengers".

So, clearly the solution should be a figure-eight swimming pool? Where 1/3 of the time you're going straight, 1/3 overcorrecting left, 1/3 right

No, the solution is to move the water and have the swimming equivalent of a treadmill. NB: this already actually exists, only remember seeing it in a video at some point though.

"Endless Pool".

They have this at the main Google campus in MTV

That's true. The motivation for the swimmer is to not get sucked into the intake. I can hear the coach laughing maniacally as he turns the speed up to 11.

It's called a river. I do a lot if river swimming, but you need to live in a country with clean rivers.

But swimming in lakes is more fun and better for your technique.

You probably saw it in person as well, it's called a river :) In Zurich there's multiple places where you can swim in the Limmat, and it takes quite some effort to stay in place - one example is https://images.app.goo.gl/qTASdR51yDTiCk299 (of course you could go without the installation but this allows people to use it that would be afraid of getting carried away ...)

Is there something like this in Berlin?

Could be some settings at the new Wellenwerk that achieve this

It would be so amazing to live near a river with water clean enough to do this :(

The problem with this is that the current is constant. When doing a long set I sometimes accent the arms and the legs alternately over say 200m. Well typically three lengths of arms and one length of kick dominated effort. The thing is the speed does change from one technique to other but moving the water at a constant speed over a short distance doesn't work properly. So it's cute for a little swimming but it's not compelling for serious training. Never mind if you want try doing an individual medley set.

make it a bit longer and have it vary the speed on the position of the swimmer...

Or just have the water channel narrow so the water velocity increases as you move forward.

Interesting - do you know if the negative effects of circular swimming pool affect fish hatcheries? (fish are forced to swim against current)

If I had to guess, I'd say not as much b/c of the size of the fish.

Most fish farms force fish to swim through a current of running water. I think most are concrete “runs” that continuously pump water through. At least what I’ve seen in the US is that way. There are now many overseas fish farms.

Regular pool, open two lanes, swim laps (up one lane, down the other). It's done with two lanes, so there is enough room to pass. I've seen it done this way several places.

I’m confused as to what you are suggesting here? Normally you swim right side of the lane and turn going back on the “left side”, with room to pass on the inside unless the lane is filled with two many people. What does using two lanes add, except ruining your turns?

If the pool was long enough, that wouldn’t be an issue. Thanks for the excellent post.

A similar idea is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank

There are also swimming "treadmills". I experienced a water jet a long time ago and it was ok, but I think these are a bit more sophisticated. These could be cool, never been in one though.

https://www.endlesspools.com/

Edit: Looked into them, they're pretty cool. You can option them with a mirror on the bottom to do form work, they take up far less space than a real pool and the fastest can sustain a pace of 51s/100yard which is very very quick.

Don't forget open-water swimming. Swimming is transformed without walls.

Many sports, each has such nice exercise stratagem. Even though swimming is my most favorite since I've been swimming for decade,

cycling: the most enjoyment of scenery, 26km (how I do per day) gives you a lot of different views; mountain, river, road, smell of air along the ways. These are also good for brain.

basketball: it just nicely exercises agility, muscle memory (imagine you nail it 10/10 shooting continually, how nice the muscle is!), reactivity, quick decision making as a team.

table tennis: it is incredible how you can control the small ball in very fast interaction, in very small area (table). Little skills you gain from this is mind-blowing to me.

I play a lot of other sports, I'm very satisfied what my body can do, and breaking current limit is also fun.

I tried most, but eventually settled with surfing and table tennis.

Running broke my hips, cycling is too expensive and dangerous, and I got tired of swimming. Too boring. I only do a long distance race once a year on our river, which is fun.

Many sports are at best when we were young with friends doing the same activities. And yes, it's boring when we are adult now. Treat it as regular eating, showering, although it's more effort, it's just boringly good, sometimes it's fun. They are just activities that our body need every day, otherwise our body is vulnerable to whatever pains.

Any sport that's good for you is great. (Not a big fan of running either, but jogging in the morning is quite nice)

Congratulations on finishing the race!

Have you seen the documentary "Kim Swims" about the first woman to swim from the Farallon Islands to San Francisco?

No but I'll look it up! That's a crazy, crazy swim.

Triathlons:

Swimming is the sea Cycling is the air Running is the earth

You learn to appreciate and respect them all.

Swimming is birth: thrown into an unfamiliar environment, you struggle to find your way Cycling is youth/midlife: You have your footing, now you speed through life with ease Running is old age: slower than you were in your prime, you learn persistence as your body weakens.

I feel your analogy needs a fourth sport to complete the 4 elements. But what sport would be represented by fire? Perhaps competitive shooting (gunpowder=fire)

Maybe the participant is the fire, interacting with the three other elements?

This year I'm doing a "Swedish Classic", which is 4 long distance races throughout the year. Three of them are the classics in triathlon, but the fourth is cross country skiing (or "nordic skiing"). So the opposite of fire, hmm, but could maybe say that fire is what makes it possible to traverse 90km of mountains in the winter.

Biathlon is ice and fire.

Martial Arts Kata comes to mind. Explosive.

How about swimming in an onsen swimming pool (make one if not exist)?

I used to do a mini triathlon, it feels like hell already!

The fourth sport in a regular triathlon is transition. You burn away any lead you had (as you can't get your shoes on etc) and emerge from the flames reborn as a new type of athlete.

Swimming is the lowest impact on your body too. Anything involving running includes frequent jolts to ankles/knees/hips/lower back.

Cycling on standard bicycles concentrates pressure on your genitals and the nerve-dense region areas around them, and puts some pressure on the lower back.

Swimming can cause unique injuries to shoulders if your form isn't right, but otherwise is very smooth and low-impact.

I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise.

Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?

I hope there's a good answer to this. At the moment my solution is to not do crawl.

I read a blog of someone preparing for a 24-hour swim around one of the Swiss lakes and he was explaining about how it's important to get the reach and catch right. I understood this to mean getting your body rotation, shoulder and slightly-bent, extended arm into the most mechanically advantageous position. I imagine that this minimises "difficult" stresses on the shoulder joint. I'm trying to implement this without a trainer and it seems not to be irritating my (unrelated) shoulder injury.

It may have been somewhere on this (http://reminiscencesofalongdistanceswimmer.blogspot.com) blog

Generally for freestyle you want to follow these rules to avoid shoulder injury:

1.) Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that. Freestyle is kind of like climbing a ladder horizontally.

2.) Keep a good rotation around your center line in the upper body. This helps to use your back muscles/lats to do the big work. You want to be sore at the end of the workout in your lats, core and maybe chest. Not your shoulders.

3.) Don't over-extend your arm in reach. Many people end up pushing down on the water they initiate their stroke, this is wasted work and also shoulder strain. You want to as quickly as possible have your hand pulling parallel to your body, which usually means a high, wide elbow in the catch.

This is a course I've been meaning to try but haven't. It purports to reduce shoulder injuries:

https://www.swimsmooth.com

This is the current view on how to initiate your pull:

https://www.triswimcoach.com/high-elbow-catch/

+ avoid swim paddles. In my club most injuries were due to swim paddles.

> Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that

Hmm, that doesn't sound quite right to me. I claim no knowledge especially in swimming technique so this is just for curious discussion and you can put me right - as a weightlifter, the most natural and least impinged arm motion for me is a diagonal across the body whereas perpendicular swinging motions are crunchy and impinged.

If I climb a ladder, I'm propelling myself with my legs and only holding on with my arms by pulling my chest to the ladder so that seems like a bad analogy. Incidentally, if you ever want to feel like your forearms might split out of their skin, try climbing a wind turbine ladder! I think I ended up having to finish it by hugging the ladder in my elbow creases having lost all grip strength due to forearm pump.

You are sort of making a diagonal movement anyway because of the rotation, that rotation is what's engaging the rest of your muscles to help you pull the water. If you cross the line, it's much harder to use your lats, your core or your chest to pull the water and instead you're using almost solely your shoulder and with increased resistance too.

That increased resistance is not helping you propell forward either, you're propelling diagonally with the stroke in that case which is a waste.

It’s true ladders are mostly leg. It’s not the best analogy perhaps a better one is pulling yourself up onto a box. You wouldn’t put your hands close to the center of the body, you’d have them out wide as you push.

Not sure what you’re referring to in terms of lifting diagonally, but as another comment noted in swimming you’re rotating around the center line with each stroke. If you were doing right-arm cable pull downs, you likely aren’t going to have the most strength with your right hand level with your left shoulder. You may rotate, using your core an back to bring the arm down but in those cases I doubt you’re crossing the center line high up in that motion.

Because of the rotation in swimming you can end up with your arm that way which will impinge on the rotator cuff.

Essentially you want to stabilize your shoulder with your lats and scapular muscles so that it doesn’t fall forward in the socket. That is what causes swimming repetitive use injuries. I say this as someone with two surgically repaired shoulders. I’ve done a lot of stroke work to keep them fixed after years of bad form.

Also, I think, try swimming slowest just to keep moving forward. I find it's good for finding balance.

Even very talented swimmers can have shoulder problems from over training. That's what cortisone shots are for.

> That or maybe it's just the hypoxia ;)

Or a kind of mild hypothermia? I've experienced your "euphoric feeling" during and after swims in cooler water. Google tells me the water temperature in San Francisco Bay is about fourteen degrees Celsius.

> Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_(medical)

Read the actual comment.

You should look into aquatic ape theory, it might explain why we feel so good when we swim. One of the ideas is that swimming required us to develop breath control, which was a prerequisite for developing speech.

Swimming is a potential deadly sport - you could drown.

With this in mind, I learned the technical aspects of swimming which forced me to focus on the here and now. If you are not focussed you make mistakes which can lead to swallowing water.

I did this in order to swim longer and faster. I finally grasped the highly meditational aspect of swimming and enjoy it.

Even though I prefer running over swimming nothing comes close to swimming in regards to meditation.

I must put in a word for my favorite sport: week-long solo backpacking. Meditation, frustration, overcoming, self-reliance, singing at the top of your lungs, not speaking for days, exhaustion, mental challenge, pushing yourself, scenery and more scenery, plenty hypoxia too. Bonus euphoria for some high summits, sleeping under the stars, catching your own food, not being eaten by predators, swimming in frozen lakes, etc. Use hiking poles for full-body workout, go off-trail for some mental exercise, push your boundaries and immerse yourself for days on end.

That sounds amazing but I’d be terrified to attempt this. Any good beginner resources you recommend?

Join a club, e.g. Colorado Mountain Club. You can rent gear for starters. Good backpacking gear is expensive and it's continuously getting better, so renting is totally sane and you probably come out ahead until you're going often. You could start by going with people doing a gear checkout, quick overnighter, not too far from their car. Do at least a basic first aid course, consider more formal wilderness training, also available through the club.

In my years I've been a keen swimmer and cyclist. When I'm pool swimming, I don't usually get that euphoric high until the cool air of outside hits me in the face as I'm leaving the building. The harder I swam, the higher the high, but it never hits me until the outside air hits my lungs. It's incomparable.

When I'm on my bike, I reach that same meditative trance. It's just the road, the pain in my legs and lungs and the focus on getting to the end of my ride, little by little, kilometre by kilometre. Everything else just falls away. My problems don't matter when I'm on my bike. The pain ensures that my focus is occupied and I'm present. Completely present. When I reach the end of my ride and fall from my bike because my legs won't carry me, the high comes as I lay trying to catch my breath.

There may be something to your observation that it could be related to hypoxia. Either way, the high is real.

How did you find the Alcatraz race ? Was water too cold ? I would love to do this but bit scared about shark attack lol ( i know there are no sharks in bay)

Water temperature is about 58°F / 14°C. With a decent wetsuit the water temperature will be fine for most everyone, although the real tough swimmers go without.

There are sharks in the Bay, mostly leopard sharks which aren't dangerous to people. At times there may be a few great white sharks as well but you'll probably never see one.

Can’t read the article, but I did want to share that the title resonates with me.

I love running and now run again, but I started learning swimming during a knee injury.

One thing it re-taught me was how rewarding it is to learn or improve a non-work related skill dramatically. I picked up juggling (poorly) and jump rope since.

Two, I knew I was getting a stroke down when I knew when to glide versus to move or exert myself. Maybe a metaphor but practically it makes 40 laps enjoyable instead of torture.

Three, having one hour of somewhat sensory deprived solitude is great therapy.

Join the club - could not read the article.

Swimming was not my thing but I had to learn so I could do other watersports.

The Down Syndrome girl and others in her special needs group that were in the pool when I went were incredible inspiration. If she could smile and put in the lengths then I could too.

FYI, on iOS, you can just read the story with the reader view. You get to it by clicking on the horizontal lines on the left side of the address bar.

It is possible to read the article within the page source, albeit complicated by markup.

I’m on iOS. Never actually tried to look at source in iOS Safari.

However, before getting there, I was able to read it just by clicking the reader view in the address bar.

Hah great tip..ty

We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life. Why would we not bring the same level of planning, anxiety and pursuit of excellence to our attempts to be happy? When you spend 40-60 hours a week trying to optimize your output at work it is difficult to not have an anxiety ridden vacation where you try to optimize your happiness.

I am sure many people can relate to the first 2-3 days of vacation being needed just to get into 'vacation-mode' where you can actually start to forgive yourself for 'wasting' a day.

It's almost insane how social conditioning plays into every aspect of work life including how we take vacations.

> We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life.

Maybe we should work on that presupposition first. If we're talking about career and material success it's probably true, but these very rarely bring true lasting happiness. You also have to look at who's telling you to "work hard" and why it's in their interest for you to do so.

Imho once you go above a very low threshold of income (allowing you to live comfortably without excesses) you should have better things to do with your time than spending 7+ hours a day working.

Vacations are the proverbial carrot on a stick. "Be a good worker this week and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself this weekend", "be a good worker this quarter and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during the next vacations", "Be a good worker all your life and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during retirement". Fast forward 45 years and you spend literally 70% of your life either working or sleeping, the rest being divided between distraction that barely keeps you going (daily Netflix or video game, weekly party, quarterly vacations) and chores. You're now physically and mentally a shadow of your past self but you have all the time you want, success!

It's extremely easy to get lost in all the little made up games we play days after days and miss the big picture.

If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture?

I understand and agree with the bit about not slaving for someone else throughout your life, but I'm curious what you mean by the "big picture" otherwise?

> If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture?

Each of us has to define the scope of his life, I personally have a hard time imagining that a fully developed human being will be deeply satisfied by consuming media. In French these things are called "divertissement", which literally means "diversion". There are many other things to explore than mere consumption. It's kind of the junk food of life, it makes you feel good for a short while but not that good in the long run. I doubt anyone will remember binge watching breaking bad as a milestone of there life (Or remember it at all).

I'm not saying these things are intrinsically bad, we should just be careful about how much of our life we dedicate to them, especially when work already takes most of our time already. If your life is work>consumption>sleep and you feel like you're missing something your probably are.

What else do you do every evening? For me, its working out, doing chores or Netflix, podcasts and video games. There is nothing else I could do. Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge.

Meditation and writing are goods ways to both relax and learn more about yourself. Learning an instrument, drawing, painting are also a very good ways to relax while learning a skill that will follow you all your life and be productive instead of passively consuming content.

With internet we also have access to books summing up the knowledge of each era/geographic area. If you're asking yourself metaphysical questions you can be sure someone already wrote a book about it. Working out and listening to certain podcasts are solid activities too. Stretching/yoga can also help unfuck our bodies after being in a chair for 8 hours.

I don't think Netflix has the ability to make you evolve and become a better version of yourself like a good book can. Unplug and take it slow, it might feel weird at the beginning but you won't look back.

Forgotten to put reading into that list, I have weeks or months where reading is my goto activity (although less last 12 months). But honestly, despite my curiosity for everything, I don´t believe books can help me become a better version of myself. Books like Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari are interesting, but that´t pretty much it. Then you have books about how to be better at something (yourself), by forming good habits and so on. At the beginning (when I didn´t known much about anything), these books had been useful. But now, nothing I read touches me / changes me a bit. It´s all more of the same. Still useful for conversations, though.

Meditation, tried it several times. I don´t get it. Sometimes, nothing happens in my mind and I just sit there for minutes, observing nothing. Other times I can observe thoughts appearing and wandering off, then I refocus on my breathing technique. Both experiences do nothing for me. I feel the same afterwards, I do the same activities afterwards.

I find books on business beneficial. Self-help books do reach a saturation point as you said, they regurgitate similar advice.

I'm surprised meditation has no results! If I focus on breathing and maintain no thought (latter took practice) for 10 minutes, I get a very strong sense of peace and calm -- it's better than drugs. Do you not notice any reduced anxiety/stress?

I thought about it, getting more calm is definitely happening. But I attribute that to the breathing technique and not the "observe mind" part. I'm feeling hardly ever stressed, so don't see any need for it. Maybe I expect too much.

Thanks for your input, though! Appreciated.

"Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge." This is the part where optimising for happiness kicks in. I was in a similar situation and it involved investing less energy in things I was doing to open up energy to learn music. Music probably won't help my career or physical fitness, but I'm gambling that it will pay off in happiness down the line.

Being able to play music / an instrument is certainly a great skill to have. Can´t do it myself, due to a shared flat, but a great thing to do!

Even working long hours for money can bring meaning & happiness if one donates a lot of that income to worthwhile causes that make the world a better place for everyone. Movements like Effective Altruism seek to find the most effective ways to donate. This of course does depend on what work one is doing and on not "wasting" non-work time on meaningless "entertainment"..

Which is why I place a high price point on my work actually being something I like working on and care about the end result of.

Spending that much time of your life on something you don't for a bit more money... it doesn't feel worthwhile.

You were taught wrong things. Most cultures value things outside of work much more and are therefore able to enjoy then more. Not to mention that discipline and hard work most often don't lead to success. There are many disciplined, hard workers working two or three minimum wage jobs. Hardly what anyone would call success, barely scraping by an existence let alone a life. People should question their culture and propaganda a lot more. Most of it is bullshit.

In March I started swimming much more due to injury. Swam 250k yards in 3mo. One session was 10k in the pool.

Getting past the boredom is a skill. In my experience it’s mostly a symptom of not focusing on your form. Don’t use a watch and count yourself to stay focused. Break it up with challenging blocks to force you to focus. For ex: 50yds on 1min will force you to move and then focus on recovery.

I now really love swimming, which is a shock.

Did you really mean to say you swam 10,000 yards in one session? At the pace you mention (50yds = 1min) that would take over 3 hours.

Yes 10400 in 2:56. It’s called a birthday set

For competitive swimmers, 10k+ days are fairly common (or used to be), split generally between morning and evening workouts. Sets might be based closer to 1:20/100m, which drops the total time a bit, though 3h in the pool isn't unusual.

A single workout of 5-6k is pretty typical.

You measure swimming distance in yards? Aren't swimming pools usually 25 meters?

In the United States the vast majority of lap pools are 25 yards. For club, high school, and collegiate swimming 25 yard pools are also the standard and most likely won’t change anytime soon - it’s one thing to adjust a track to run meters versus yards but there are thousands of already built pools that can’t be “extended”. Having said that, it’s not hard to find a long course (50m) or short course (25m) pool either as all international records and competition are held in those formats. Usually a 50m pool with either have a movable bulkhead that can dynamically be adjusted for a specific length, or also common is a 50mx25yd length to be able to have two options.

Yes exactly. My local pool is 50m lengthwise and 25yds the other way.

I snorkel a few times a week in the ocean and the experience is always surreal. When I see marine life staring back at me through the water, the experience etches itself deep into my mind. So much so that I can pull the experience back out later in the day and play it back with great detail. This connectedness to nature has given me an incredible amount of peace and happiness.

Scuba has been the only activity I've ever had a 'life-changing' experience while doing. The ocean is truly a meditative place. Can't be an astronaut? Get under the ocean. It's basically the same thing.

>Ever the philosopher of the pool, Igor smiled and said, “You are all confused! Speed is not the goal; it is the result of perfect beautiful technique.”

>What really mattered to Igor was excellence — the efficient stroke. Once you mastered that, he argued, speed would follow naturally. Speed was simply the welcome side effect of swimming well.

>I’ve been thinking lately that there’s a lesson here that goes beyond the pool. We all wanted to swim faster and the more hysterically we tried, the more speed escaped us. The same goes for happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, yet the more directly we pursue happiness, the more elusive it becomes.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

One of my favorite phrases from my time in the service.

Smooth is zero waste stroke :)

I swim a lot, but find it quite boring.

I bought a waterproof Ipod shuffle + waterproof headphones from Amazon and it improved the experience 100x.

Note - use vaseline to seal the headphones into your ear, and wrap the extra wire under your goggle straps or you won't have a good time.

Highly recommend.

Or give up on the seal and pick songs with huge bass and that are mixed loud and then audio boost them to the max. For instance Lindsay Stirling and fall out boy seem mixed loud and are actually pretty audible through water.

I really only need beat to exercise anyway.

Experience: several hundred hours of swimming with headphones through the aughts and 10s

I would recommend to try and to be bored for a few hours. You might be surprised.

I’ve been doing masters swimming for the last few years, through waxing and waning levels of commitment and dedication. We do around 3.5 -4.5 k per session. When I’m consistently going 3+ times a week there’s no other fitness high like it.

I have been interested in swimming for a few years but never found the place to develop the skill to the point of not drowning.

I could try to swim in my apartment's tiny shallow pool which is really better for children.

I could spend $200/mo at a nearby health club.

I could drive to the ocean and jump in.

The first just isn't big enough or deep enough to get anything done.

The second is ... well I want to go swimming but not that bad.

If I just jumped in the ocean, especially the Pacific around the bay area, I would just expect to drown. I can swim a bit but not enough to have confidence with the ocean.

What else can I do?

There are natural (and man-made) bodies of water that are inexpensive to access and don't have the problems of the ocean, like natural and artificial lakes.

There are, for that matter, public pools that are cheaper than health club pools.

What about other bodies of water than the ocean? Like lakes or somerhing. Mostly still water.

Or where I live, they have put swimming lanes in the ocean. Like a dock that extends out on two places, and with lane separators in between. Free and safe.

But what I did was to just pay for a swimming course over X weeks. That included entrance to the swimming facilities on the course days. Find one for your level, and the progress will be swift.

Have you considered taking swimming lessons? You'd probably still have to pay for them, but it wouldn't be a monthly subscription and swim classes are (usually) designed to teach you how to swim without drowning.

In general, if you want to learn how to do something, there are probably people willing to teach you. You don't have to figure everything out from first principles.

Here's a learning process you can do on your own at your local pool, lake or ocean. The problem with learning to swim is that there are perhaps a half a dozen independent motor skills needed and it's hard to learn them all at once. This breaks it down to one skill at a time. Do all of this is shallow water, say, four feet in depth.

1) buy a mask, fins and snorkel set.

2) throw way the snorkel (not really, store it away for much later)

3) start with a kick board and fins. Do an hour of just kicking with the fins on. Now you've learned the kicking motor skill.

4) Next put on your mask (defog it with your spit, youtube will show you how, yuckky I know but necessary) and now, with fins on, start kicking, as usual, but also start stroking with your arms. Don't bother trying to breath yet, just stand up when you need to breath. Do this for an hour.

5) Repeat 4 above but now try to breath on your dominate side (right side if you're right handed, other side if you're not). It's tricky to learn how to breathe without coughing, definitely practice this for an hour.

6) Take off your fins and repeat step 5. It will feel really weird without the extra power of the fins but your arm strokes should pull you thru.

7) Perhaps the ugliest part. Take of your mask and repeat step 6. Learning to manage the discomfort of having your face in the water does take some effort, but at least you've saved the hardest for the last. Keeping water out of your nose requires a continuous but very low pressure exhaling thru your nose when it's underwater. Your eyes will sting when you open them underwater so only do that for short glances to get your bearings.

8) Repeat step 7 for 32 lengths and bingo! You're a swimmer.

Not sure about learning to swim with fins. Haven't used them for ages, but from what I remember, you just cannot move your hands fast enough to match the speed you can get with fins. What I used to as a teen just be on my back and go full-speed.

I'm going to preface this by mentioning that I swam competitively starting at around age 6 through high school, was both a life guard and swim instructor at UCSF's rec center during high school, tend to be an overly cautious person, have had to pull a lifeless body from the ocean before, and have witnessed too many near drownings to count.

With that out of the way, does anyone else think its a really bad idea to advise someone who in their own words is trying to develop their swimming skill to the "point of not drowning", to simply find some seemingly calm piece of open water and have at it? I think this is terrible advice. If you aren't comfortable in the water you shouldn't be going into any natural body of water unsupervised, no matter how calm it may appear.

I no longer live in the BA but you should be able to find a YMCA, community swimming pool, or your local community college, that will have adult swim classes for beginners at a very reasonable cost. A couple weeks of classes and you should be comfortable enough to where you most likely won't drown, keep in mind even excellent swimmers drown on occasion.

Once you have the basics down you can join a local Masters club if you want to get more serious. Please don't go practice at Ocean beach.

After you've gotten some swimming lessons (check out the books and technique made by Terry Laughlin - swimming made easy might be a good start), then find an open water swimming club that takes on beginners (try meetup or facebook). Might not be for you, but you also might not know until you've tried it.

If you can find one-on-one swimming lessons where the instructor has access to a pool already, I think that would suit your aims quite well.

Most reasonably fit adults can get to the point of "not drowning" in still water in a single half hour lesson. Two tops. Learn to float, tread, then swim, then jump in and transition to swimming.

I did this once with a 60 year old woman who was initially quite scared, and I hadn't taught in years before this so I was certainly not as good as any paid teacher.

I used to live in NYC and there is an amazing network of public pools that were very inexpensive ($25/6 months I think). I’d bet most major cities have something similar. Definitely worth a search.

This part struck me:

> “Study after study shows that good social relationships are the strongest, most consistent predictor there is of a happy life.”

I was having a similar conversation with some friends recently. In our parents' generations (boomers), folks tended to cluster in their communities, which were usually religious. As our generation has grown up we've shunned the oppressive religious thinking but ended up losing the community aspect. I believe that's where all this social anxiety and feelings of loneliness come from. I'm mostly introverted but feel happier and refreshed after spending time with friends. I've joined a group of other rock climbers and we do outings monthly. I love climbing but really love the mini-community we've created. I see the author here found the same thing. Being around other folks in a shared bond of movement (swimming, running, etc) fosters joy :)

I used to do competitive swimming but it was training that allowed you to switch off and can't beat it. Alas public swimming pool's are a chaos of noise and actions and whilst some have swim lanes, your kinda relieving gridlock and just causes more stress than I can expel.

I swim in public swimming pool regularly, crash every damn kid playing finding items under the pool with their friends.

Our local public pool opens at 7:00 and the small group of people who are there every day at that time all come purely to do their laps for an hour.

Personally I can't stand chlorified water though...

The only thing that sucks with loving swimming is that the free market has a hard time reacting to the fluctuations in demand. If I want to open a gym I’ll buy a big garage or something, buy a lot of equipment and hire some PTs. If I want to open up a facility for swimming there’s a hell of a lot more up front costs in building a pool and recruiting life guards and swimming instructors.

In this heat wave over Europe I’ve been forced to lakes and oceans to get my laps, but it is a bit more challenging to get that to work.

happiness is the welcome side effect of the things you do, so do the things you like, and happiness will come in nature.

I can't read the article either. I used to go swimming often and it made me feel really good. But for me, something makes it really hard to do it regularly so it always petered out. Which is annoying, because it obviously improved my life. Non-exercise things are so much easier for me to work on and to keep on doing. Playing chess one hour per day? No problem! Swimming four times a week? Eh...

I do swim, run and bike all the time. Best thing about swimming is that you are totally by yourself without any distractions. When running or biking you end up getting distracted with music in your ears or other people on road. Swimming is very meditative specifically for this reason. Most of all very little impact on the joints.

I enjoyed reading the article.

> In the end, happiness is a side effect of living well

I find that I get that side effect from any physical activity including but not limited to walking, cycling, running, or swimming.

<sarcasm>“That I’m miserable and hate everyone”</sarcasm>

At my Y, the swimmers are not exactly people filled with joy.

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