Water babies
Published
Learning to swim as a pre-schooler means you are almost twice as likely to be a ‘very confident’ swimmer in adulthood, according to a survey by health club brand Total Fitness. They surveyed over 2,000 Brits to explore the UK’s relationship with swimming, the availability of pools in the UK, and how our nation’s children engage with swimming.
In the survey, 65 per cent of adults who learnt to swim at age four or under classed themselves as very confident. This drops to 49 per cent for people who learnt to swim between five to eight years old and drops significantly by the time people reached secondary school level, when only 27 per cent later classed themselves as confident in the water.
Even those people who consider themselves very competent are often unable to dive confidently from the side of the pool, swim long distances, or more challenging strokes like the butterfly. More than 1 in 4 people who consider themselves water-confident are unable to tread water for a minute or swim front crawl. And around a third of UK adults lack basic swimming skills.
Sophie Lawler, CEO at Total Fitness, comments: ‘Swimming is a lifelong skill, it helps save lives, builds confidence and is a great way to introduce children to fitness. Getting children into swimming from an early age can help develop motor skills and muscles, increase cognitive function and coordination, and even teach problem-solving.’
However, getting access to pre-school swimming lessons or even a pool appears to be a significant challenge for parents. The research revealed that almost a third of parents find that a lack of access to a pool and lessons are barriers to teaching their children to swim.
Sophie adds: ‘With high energy costs and increasing financial pressures on local authorities, we are seeing public swimming pools and school swimming lessons take a hit. It’s becoming much more common for children to be taught to swim by their parents, or in private lessons.’
With this in mind, Total Fitness launched the Swim Academy last year to encourage children into the pool and to show them how fun exercise can be.
