HEALTH & FITNESS : ATTAINING THE BODY BEAUTIFUL : Adult Swim Students Dive Into Pool of Fears

With an arm around each youngster’s waist, Melissa Gagne spins her two students around in the water in a game of “ring around the rockets,” then carries them to the side of the pool. Still wearing big grins, the preschoolers are scooped up in warm towels and praised by their parents.

For them, the swimming lesson at Los Caballeros Sports Village in Fountain Valley has been a half-hour of playtime.

But for the two students getting into the pool next, it’s going to be hard work.

They, too, are beginners. But Barbara Karvelas is 45, and Anna Acevedo is 23.

Both wish they had learned to swim when they were young enough to play ring around the rockets.

Now they have to get past the embarrassment and fear that keeps many non-swimming adults from taking lessons.

But Karvelas, Acevedo and others are finding out that you’re never too old to learn to swim.

It just takes time, patience--and the courage to try.

Karvelas takes a deep breath and sets out across the shallow pool. But after a couple of strokes, she’s back on her feet, looking to her instructor for guidance.

“Your arms are not coming out of the water,” Gagne tells her. “But you didn’t pick your head up to breathe, which is good.”

“One thing at a time,” Karvelas says before continuing to make her way slowly across the pool.

Gagne turns her attention to Acevedo, who also is practicing her freestyle stroke.

“Anna,” the instructor says, “you’re starting to put your head up when you breathe, and your left arm is barely coming out of the water.”

“I keep getting water in my nose,” Acevedo complains.

“Don’t breathe through your nose!” Gagne reminds her.

Karvelas and Acevedo are taking their third lesson with Gagne--and they’ve learned enough to get frustrated trying to put it all together.

But they’re already feeling the exhilaration that comes with progress.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Karvelas says. “It would be frustrating if I thought I couldn’t learn, but I’m sure I can.”

The Fountain Valley resident took some lessons as a child growing up in Southern California, “but I could never swim because I never learned to breathe correctly,” she says. “I felt I was missing out on a lot of fun. It’s embarrassing to have to take swimming lessons as an adult, but now I don’t care what people say. You’re never too old to learn something new.”

Karvelas plans to continue taking lessons until she’s able to swim laps for fitness.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” she says. “I figured better late than never.”

Anna Acevedo, a Fountain Valley resident who grew up in Orange County, also wants to be able to swim laps and to try scuba diving. Like Karvelas, she took lessons briefly as a child but never mastered the basics.

“I was never comfortable in the ocean. Going to the beach was always intimidating,” she says.

Swimming doesn’t come easily for her at 23.

Just putting her face in the water was difficult at first. Then came the breathing.

“I’m taking in a lot of water,” she says. “When I breathe, I’m not getting enough air. And it’s hard to get the stroking and breathing together. But I’ve improved a lot, and this is just the third lesson. I’m much more comfortable in the water.”

No one keeps figures on the number of adults who take swimming lessons, says Louise Priest, executive director of the Council for National Cooperation in Aquatics in Indianapolis.

However, she says, “adult learn-to-swim programs are being promoted more now because fitness is being promoted more today, and aquatics is a safer fitness activity than running--and just about as good in terms of cardiovascular output.”

John Bainbridge, owner of the Australian Swim School and vice president of the National Swim School Assn., says about 10% of swimming school programs are for adults, and about three-fourths of the students are women--”maybe because they’re less embarrassed.”

“It’s a real challenge to work with adults,” he says. “They have years of fear built up inside them. They’re like a 3-year-old. They want to cry out, but they can’t.”

He says children adapt more easily to the water because their natural instincts aren’t blocked by fear: “Adults will try to use brute force to get from A to B. They work against the water.”

Because so many adults learning to swim have had a traumatic experience in the water, instructors often start by giving them a chance to express their anxieties.

It’s important to calm them because they may be having a genuine panic attack caused by a fear of losing control and drowning, says Arthur Resnikoff, an Irvine psychologist whose specialty is counseling athletes.

Once they’re able to put their face in the water, one of the hardest things for many adults to learn is how to move from a prone to a standing position, Bainbridge says.

Resnikoff explains why: “You feel yourself begin to go down as you try to stand up. That’s scary. It raises the specter of what can go wrong. It’s a great relief when your feet touch the bottom.”

Resnikoff says adults also are hindered by the fear of failure.

“They think, ‘Other people learn how to do this when they’re 6. What’s wrong with me?’ Or, ‘I may be able to learn to swim, but I’ll never look like all these other people who swim so well.’

“If you get distracted by negative thoughts, you can’t relax, which affects your breathing. And you can’t listen to what the instructor is telling you to do.”

With so many emotional barriers to overcome before they can even begin to acquire skills that no longer come naturally, ridicule can be devastating to adult swim students, Resnikoff notes.

“It’s important for the people around them to be supportive and encouraging about the progress they’re making--no matter how small.”

For those who have been frightened by a traumatic experience in the water, small steps are especially satisfying.

Emily Evangelista, a 29-year-old Garden Grove resident, fell into a river during a school field trip in the sixth grade. The water was shallow and “I could have stood up, but I didn’t because I’d lost control,” she says.

She’s been afraid of the water ever since.

Swimming pools were not easily accessible where she grew up in the Philippines, so she never had a chance to take lessons.

When she signed her 8-year-old daughter, Kathryn, up for lessons offered by the Australian Swim School at Racquetball World in Fountain Valley recently, she decided it was about time she learned, too. She took lessons with Kathryn, and can now swim freestyle, breast stroke and back stroke.

“That’s a great achievement,” she says.

“It was tough. It was very tiring, and I was nervous. But I learned to relax and have fun in the water instead of pressuring myself to apply techniques.”

The hardest part for her, she says, was overcoming her embarrassment and working up the courage to take a class. But she has learned in sharing her accomplishments with others that “there are a lot of people out there who are scared.”

“I wish they’d just go for it,” she says.

Peggy Myers, a 25-year-old Costa Mesa resident, is among those who have.

She’s always loved being around water, but didn’t learn how to swim when she was growing up in a rural part of Northern California.

About five years ago, an acquaintance playfully pushed Myers into a swimming pool at a party.

“At first I panicked. I thought I was dead. But when I came out of the water, there was a friend right there. It was really scary--and embarrassing having all these people jump in to help me.”

Myers continued to put off taking lessons even after that incident.

“Every year I’d say I’d do it, but then I’d get scared,” she says.

She finally took the hardest step--going to that first class--about three months ago.

“I felt really uncoordinated at first. I couldn’t pick up on it for the first few lessons,” she says.

But after that, she improved steadily with practice.

She passed the beginning class at the Newport-Costa Mesa Family YMCA and is continuing instruction to build endurance so she can swim laps and take up water sports.

“I’ve been having so much fun,” she says. “I’m getting a lot of positive feedback because a lot of people know how afraid I was.

“It’s a good feeling knowing I can go out in the water and play or get exercise, and I don’t have to be self-conscious about it or have other people worry about me.”

Her instructor, 18-year-old Travis Clark, is especially proud of his adult students.

“I have a lot of respect for people who come out for this class,” he says. “If I couldn’t swim at this age, I wouldn’t want to admit it.”

He says that, although adults have a harder time than children adjusting to the water, they are easier to teach because “they pay attention and they want to learn.”

In group classes, they cheer each other on and learn from the mistakes of others, he notes.

He says most of his adult students progress rapidly from blowing bubbles to swimming laps.

“If they’re willing to practice,” he says, “it doesn’t take long at all.”