This morning at 7:40 am I met my friend Amal at the LA Fitness in downtown Bellevue. At lunch last week Amal told me that as a result of a recent physical examination (that indicated high blood sugar levels and other negative items) he was increasing his consistency of exercise. Part of his new regimen is swimming, but he told me that he really has no experience with swimming and was finding it quite difficult to complete six laps. I offered to coach him a little bit and this led to the Friday rendezvous.
The pool at LA Fitness has three roped lanes for lap swimming. Amal and I had the near side lane to ourselves. The middle lane had one woman in it and the far lane had one man in it. Amal and I began by having me watch him swim one lap, then moving on to some basic balance drills and kicking drills. During the course of this introductory lesson the woman in the next lane had been watching us most of the time, but had remained silent. As we were nearing the end of the lesson I was giving Amal instruction about not attempting the front crawl (freestyle) until he had mastered some other basic concepts. This is because he has an aversion to swimming with his head under water, which is required for proper freestyle form. To give him an outlet for exercise in the mean time while he works on his drills for the next week I wanted to show him the beginner version of the breast stroke. This is the version used by many beginners and recreational swimmers where the head is above water the entire time. This is how I introduced the idea to him.
me: I can tell that you have an aversion to swimming with your head under water. This is a completely natural reaction that many beginning swimmers have and is not a big deal. Your body wants to breath and when it can't breath in and out whenever it wants this can be unsettling at first. So, I want to show you a technique where you can swim with your head above water the whole time to give you something you can exercise with until we build enough foundation where you can do the front crawl. But, I just want you to know that what I am about to show you is NOT the correct form for the breast stroke.
(at this point the woman in the next lane, who I had not even noticed was swimming nearby in the next lane says)
woman: That's not the correct way huh?
me: No. I'd call it the beginner head out of the water way.
woman: Well, that is how we always did it in Europe.
(I am completely dumbstruck by her statement at this point. Without saying anything I turn back to Amal and continue the demonstration of the technique.)
Later on I puzzled over this exchange and realized what had happened. This woman had been swimming in the next lane the entire time using what I had called the "beginner head out of the water" breaststroke. Since I had not been paying any attention to her at all I only interpreted her question in the context of my work with Amal and therefore gave her a direct and honest answer appropriate for that context. Unfortunately, I had not realized that I had probably just inadvertently insulted her since she had been swimming that way the entire time. Here is the really interesting part, what does her Europe retort even mean? She was a middle-aged white woman with no discernible accent. This means she did not grow up anywhere in Europe. Did she visit there? Vacation there? Live there for a few years? While there did she participate in an active swimming regimen where they conformed to the European version of the breaststroke? Are Europeans dead set on swimming the breaststroke in an incredibly inefficient manner? (This is rhetorical. Europeans, and everyone else for that matter, know proper breaststroke form). Or is this one of those vague references to Europe that some middle/upper-middle/upper class white people make in an attempt to trump whatever had just been said because as everyone knows Europe is the center for all intellectual, cultural, and physical perfection?
As an interesting finale to the whole strange saga I also showed Amal the side stroke as a second "head above water" way to just get down the lane a few times. A few minutes later I looked up to see the woman in the middle lane trying to do a side stroke and doing it very poorly. When she saw that I saw her doing it she immediately stopped.
