I’ve worked with a lot of swimmers who initially struggle to stroke up and down the pool, typically with head up and moving water anyway they can. The first step in learning to swim well is to work on breathing. By exhaling with your face in the water and inhaling with your head turned sideways and not lifting your head.

While children easily learn breathing intuitively in their swim lessons, for adult beginners this can be a daunting task. An underlying reason is panic, a natural response to the fear of not being able to breathe in water. It is a normal human response we need to reconcile. 

In adult lessons, swimmers start to work with breathing in the water, starting with bobs where you exhale slightly submerged and then inhale above the water. Initially, swimmers might cycle through the breaths, inhaling and exhaling a few times above the water. Eventually, you want to only exhale below the surface and inhale once when you rise. It takes time to feel comfortable.

Feeling comfortable is the whole point! Watch an experienced swimmer and you’ll see someone comfortable with movement — and breathing — in the water. Likely they were one of those kids who learned at an early age. But adult learners have to learn to be comfortable. Starting with bobs and moving to kicking down the lane, turning your head for air.

Feeling anxious in the water, even as you master breathing, takes time to accomplish. Some beginning swimmers are out of breath after swimming one lap. And while this typically is a result of inefficient kicking, that breathlessness can also be a result of anxiety. Anxious swimmers tighten up their diaphragm, making it more difficult to breathe, and tightening their whole body. Hard muscles (when they’re not doing useful work) will sink, whereas relaxed muscles will float. 

If you have a complete fear of water, start with a professional instructor. They will help you to overcome getting your face wet, and teach you how to float and become relaxed. Then you can start to learn swimming movements. 

If you’re like a lot of people I see at the pool, swimming a modified heads-up breaststroke, or swimming strokes with your head out of the water (which we call the Tarzan stroke), you need to: 

1. Recognize that a part of your struggle is an unconscious fear of water. Being mindful about it helps you to manage it.
2. Learn to be comfortable in still water by floating on your back, face up, or then face down exhaling through your nose. 
3. Go to a deeper part of the pool. Sink down to the bottom, exhaling. Push up out of the water and inhale. At first breathe in and out, then sink down again. Work up to the point where all your exhalation is underwater, and you only take one breath above the surface. Do this 5-6 times with rhythmic breathing.
4. Master drills that teach body rotation. When one shoulder is up, turning your head to breathe is easier.
5. Watch good swimmers. Observe how they breathe. And when in the stroke they breathe. Notice, too, how their head displaces water, creating a bow wave ahead of them, as they breathe effortlessly in the pocket behind this bow wave.

Overcoming being anxious while swimming takes time and patience. But learning to relax as you swim is an essential first skill.