Emergencies in adult swimming lessons through Miracle Swim

Sarasota, FL, Aug. 10, 2024 –(PR.com)– Teaching swimming skills on top of fear instead of treating it first, according to Mellon (M. Ellen) Dash of Miracle Swimming, has created an emergency across the U.S. and around the world: Adults too often withdraw from regular lessons. They come off as insecure. Most adults dread swimming lessons. Learning to stroke doesn’t take away their fear.
Now:

· 50% of adults (over 120 million) in the US are afraid of water and cannot swim
· Eighty percent of drownings in the United States are adults
· Drowning among adults aged 65-74 increased by 19% in 2022 compared to 2019
-CDC

According to the American Red Cross, „85% of adults say they can swim, but half of them can’t perform basic water skills.”

„Most instructional agencies don’t realize it, but traditional adult swimming lessons don’t teach basic water skills. They ignore fear. As a result, most adults who fear the water fail to feel safe or confident in lessons,” explains Mellon (M. Ellen) Dash, founder of Miracle Swim School for Adults in Sarasota, Florida. .which feeds a high drowning rate.”

Fearful students and their instructors have conflicting definitions of learning to swim.

respectively:

1. Even though I don’t know the proper stroke, I can comfortably relax and play in deep water as long as I want.
2. I can make one stroke in shallow water from here to there.

The first is the portrayal of water conservation. Students expect to be calm and safe in deep water. Learn more about stroke later.

The second is a definition commonly found in general and routine subjects. It’s like, „I can swim because I can move my arms and legs 'like this’.” This is not enough to make students feel safe or confident in deep water. Their fear leads to panic. Panic is the most common cause of drowning in adults. Curing fear means significantly reducing panic and therefore overwhelm.

Diana Nyad, the 111-mile swimmer from Cuba to Florida, whose story is told in Nyad (Netflix) television spots on Miracle Swimming. She asserts: “It is alarming how many adults drown in our country every year. 80 percent of drownings are adults. These senseless deaths can be prevented. Most adult swimming programs are not comprehensive enough to teach someone how to save her/his own life. These are 100% useful skills that every adult needs. Let’s do something about adult drowning.

A new knowledge emerged from more than 40 years of exclusive teaching by Dash and his staff to approximately 6,000 fearful adults. Advances have rendered conventional methods of adult swimming training obsolete. Agencies don’t know evolution.

Examples of new knowledge:

Inhibits learning
-A perfect float is horizontal.
Learning a freestyle-like stroke makes you safer in deep water.
When you are scared you are told to relax. Despite the fear, blow the bubbles, release the wall, slide, kick.
– If you can do it in the shallow end, you can do it in the deep.
A standard 'swim test’ of movements determines whether one is safe.

Enables learning
– Perfect float can be horizontal, diagonal or vertical.
– The ability to stay calm without going anywhere in deep water keeps you safe. A stroke will only keep you safe if you can swim out of something chasing you.
– If you are afraid of water, let yourself be where you are. Ask all your questions. Be true to yourself. Learn to trust yourself.
– If there is fear, you think deeply differently. If there is fear, regardless of what you „can do,” you cannot be safe in the shallows or deep.
– The ability to rest quietly in deep water for 10 minutes determines whether a person is safe.

Andrea Andrews, an aquatics expert in the UK and director of CLG’s The Lifesaving Foundation in Ireland, confirms, „Research shows that adults give up swimming lessons where they don’t feel safe.”

Dr Shane Baker, a drowning prevention and water safety expert at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia, said, “There is a paucity of data available for swimming and water safety programs for adults. „Urgent attention is needed to neutralize the emergency,” he said.

This emergency calls for action by students, instructors, and instructional institutions. The best hope for global water safety is to campaign against fear mongering, re-examine regular lesson curricula, rewrite instructor training manuals, and train instructors nationally and internationally in a proven system to make adults and therefore „all” adults safer.

On October 5, 2024, a „Be Comfortable in the Water Day” will be held to educate fearful adults, their instructors, learn-to-swim agencies and journalists about the wrong system.

Saturday, October 5, 2024, 1-4 p.m
Arlington Park Aquatic Center
2650 Waldemere Street
Sarasota, FL 34239

For information, contact:
Joe Federico
[email protected]