Above water – learning to swim properly at the adult education center

“Very good, Anne, next time just push off and the turn will be perfect!” I appear and look around, I haven’t made it three meters from the starting block.

I beam at my smiling trainer. I know – and everyone has seen – that I didn’t turn things around so well again. I performed all the components that we practiced individually. Swim up, grab the edge with both hands, pull up. Arms bent, knees in front of the chest. Left arm shoots into the water, upper body and head rotate underwater, right arm hits the water above the head, push off after completing the rotation, dive five meters. In my excitement I forgot to push off this time and rolled up crooked, but the turn and arm swing were better than before.

We hang in a row at the edge of the pool on the window side and try to turn around at the starting block of the outermost lane one after the other. This is in the swimming pool Anton-Saefkow-Place in Berlin Lichtenberg reserved every Friday lunchtime for our adult education course. If there isn’t much going on, we can also use a second 25-meter track. There are about eight of us, most of us middle-aged women. Christian Binner is our trainer. The deputy props master of the Maxim Gorki Theater gives swimming lessons across generations in his free time and is happy when his protégés overtake him. As we practice the wave motion of dolphin swimming, he laughs and tells us how his youngsters often swim under him with the perfect drive and tease him. It might be difficult to learn to dolphin. “The movement is coming from here!” He taps his breastbone. “You have to learn that when you’re a child!”

Learning itself is the most important factor VHS courseswhich range from freestyle swimming at all levels to improving general swimming technique. We begin the hour and a half course with unusual warm-up exercises – rotating our arms in opposite directions like the blades of a mill. In the water we are supposed to breaststroke a length with our arms and crawl with our legs. We swim back on our backs, arms in sync, legs on the chest. Each as best as she can. The younger ones swim four lengths between exercises, the older ones only swim two.

We can choose what we practice – turning with a turn or roll, dolphin, front crawl or rescue swimming? We have a lot of fun doing it. Christian follows us intently on the edge. When he sees one of us dreamily heading for the edge of the pool, he runs to avoid hitting him.

On the last day of our ten double lessons we swim in pairs, one holds on to the feet of the other and swims legs-crawl, front arms-chest. It’s fun and it gets even better when our trainer is happy. A teacher who always encourages is the best thing that can happen to you. In a good mood, Christian finally lets us save each other; I drag our only man away, spluttering.

As we say goodbye, we long for the next course to begin. Goodbye until mid-February!