Never too late to learn to how to swim
Coach Hermine Terhorst works with Trisha Brown of her afternoon group at the Ridgway Swim Center in Santa Rosa.
JEFF KAN LEE / PDPublished: Sunday, August 28, 2011 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, August 28, 2011 at 10:10 a.m.
At age 53, Gwen Tunzini stepped into the small pool at the YMCA for her first swimming lesson. At the same time a bunch of 3- to 5-year-olds gathered for their swim class.
Tunzini looked up and recognized one of the toddler's mothers as a former co-worker.
“That was my benchmark for humiliation,” said Tunzini.
But never doubt the determination of a late-bloomer wannabe swimmer. Three years after Tunzini was putting her face in the pool and blowing bubbles, she swam 1.2 miles in the Russian River in this summer's Vineman triathlon.
“I just kept at it,” said Tunzini, a winery website manager, who's been a cyclist for years but now prefers swimming. She is asked now by friends who never advanced past the dog paddle to teach them how to do it right.
Kaiser nurse and artist Monica Schwalbenberg-Pena told herself she was going to learn to swim before she turned 50.
“I wanted to learn all my life,” she said. “I grew up in San Francisco where it was usually too cold to swim. I took a few lessons as a kid, but they were mostly mean teenagers screaming at you.”
YMCA swimming instructor Teresa Peele, who taught both women, said, “An adult who learns to swim doesn't take it for granted. For an adult, it's taken a lot for them to get there. But what surprises a lot of people is that you don't have to work as hard as you think you do.”
Once summer ends and kids go back to school, community pools fill up with adult swimmers, including a lot of first-timers.
Off-season is a good time for adults to learn to swim, whether you're a beginner or upgrading your old-fashioned ways, said Hermine Terhorst who gives swim lessons and coaches the Santa Rosa Masters Swimming program at the city's Ridgway and Finley pools.
“The pools are crazy during the summer and craziness is not a good thing for people who already have anxieties about the water,” said Terhorst.
There are many reasons why people put off learning to swim until advanced middle age and older. A frightening childhood experience in the water. Living in a culture or a community where swimming lessons are not available. And then the vanity thing — putting on a swimsuit and parading in front of others.
Schwalenberg-Pena's fear of water came from being knocked off an inner tube at Stinson Beach when she was 13.
“I was underwater and thought I was going to die,” she said. “My sister saw me and pulled me out. But after that I was very afraid. I'd go to the beach and walk in no higher than my shins. I was so lucky to get Teresa when I decided to learn. She doesn't think you're weird if you're afraid of water.”
At 54, Schwalenberg-Pena swims at the Y three times a week, packs a suit whenever she travels and keeps one in the car just in case she finds a tempting body of water.
“The biggest challenge is not getting short of breath when you swim,” she said. “You don't want to breathe fast and hard. That took so long to learn. I practiced breathing and turning my head even when I was walking my dog.”
She also got past the vanity issue, moving from black swimsuits that made her feel invisible to bright pink.
“You see every body type at the pool,” she said. “It's no big deal if you have white big legs. There are all kinds. Fit, old, young, not so fit.”
Joel Brown, a mechanical engineer from Windsor, swam as a kid in Boston but wanted to know how to go the distance and signed up for lessons at Finley Center with Terhorst.
“I told her I can't seem to swim more than 100 yards at most,” he said. “I can't get my breath. She asked me to swim for her and said ‘Joel, you don't know how to swim.'”
Again, the breathing.
“When I was a kid you kind of swam basically on your stomach, did your freestyle, picking my head out of the water and trying to get a breath and putting my head back in the water,” he said. “But somewhere in the past 10 or 15 years, they teach you to basically roll from side to side, always switching as if you were a sailboat, reducing your frontal area. Hermine taught me how to do that and how to breathe at the same time.”
Terhorst explained her focus on breathing.
“In stress it's automatic to hold our breath and not exhale,” she said. “I see people who think they know how to swim but can barely get across the pool one length and it's because they're holding their breath. They don't exhale. They end up with carbon dioxide overload. What I try to get across in the first lesson is to understand about oxygen. Teaching balance and exhaling in the water. Then it's easy.”
Terhorst sees a lot of people getting into swimming initially “because they can't do the other things. Can't run like they used to, can't play basketball. Their bodies won't let them do what they used to.
But, she said, usually when they discover swimming, they're hooked. “They realize it's the greatest sport in the world and you can do it until you are 100.”
Brown, who just turned 60, swims competitively and is part of Terhorst's masters team, said, “Swimming is the only exercise I've ever done that I can go to when I'm tired and come out refreshed. It's not like running where you may feel good but you're whooped.”
Same with Jeff Scharfen, a high school teacher who traded running for swimming when he turned 50. That was nine years ago, when he was inspired to take up serious swimming after watching his kids excel on the Neptunes team.
With his new talent he's also become assistant swim coach for Cardinal Newman High School.
Susan David of Santa Rosa swam in pools in the East Bay and in the ocean in L.A. But, at midlife, she decided to get serious about it and began lessons with Terhorst, whom she knew as her Pilates instructor.
She'd been getting most of her exercise by gardening and walking and thought swimming might add a nice balance to that and also ease some problems with her knees.
From the beginning, she said, “I loved being in the water,” and set a goal of swimming non-stop for an hour which she now does handily.
“I swim for exercise and fun. I'm probably fitter than I was before,” she said. “I don't have as much achiness in the morning. I've made some good friends in the water. Everybody looks pretty happy in the pool.”
At 80, Jennifer Nichols of Sebastopol swims almost daily, although it wasn't until three years ago she finally learned the best stroke for her body.
“I was born in England, where you either did the sidestroke or the breast stroke,” she said. “I did the side stroke.”
But when her doctor told her the side stroke was not good for her, that she should learn the total immersion technique of the crawl, she signed up for lessons at the YMCA with instructor Peele.
“It took a lot of practice to breathe. I gulped a lot of water at first,” said Nichols. “My kick is still not great but I can breathe properly now.”
She swims in community pools in the winter and in the summer uses an above-ground lap pool on her property.
Because of a lifelong issue with scoliosis brought on by childhood arthritis, she said, “Swimming is what I do for my back. When I don't swim everything starts to hurt and I don't stand as straight.”
But there's more.
“Swimming is so helpful for one's state of mind. I swim out my tensions. It's my serenity.”
Susan Swartz is a freelance writer and author based in Sonoma County. Contact her at susan@juicytomatoes.com
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