Swimming and water are an inspiration for me

Very often when swimming in a pool or in the sea, I get great ideas. As I swim, I break completely free from everyday troubles and my mind switches off all worries. As if by pure magic, I come up with solutions to various problems which had previously disturbed me for days.

The magic of swimming

The magic of swimming revealed itself to me for the first time when I was in the 4^th grade. This is when I started swimming lessons arranged for us by our school.

I remember there was something magical about the pool. It was the first time I saw that much water in one place, clear and clean, such that I could see through it right to the bottom of the pool. I was mesmerized. I had the feeling I was on another planet. And I didn’t feel any fear of water at all. We were a large group of children and I, instead of paying attention to our swimming teacher, was fonder of playing in the water. The swimming teacher was more engaged with the kids who did pay attention to her instructions. Well, eventually I did learn how to swim (kind of) at the very end of our classes.

At the end of the swimming course there was a competition. I was in the audience – this whole fuss and razzle-dazzle were weird to me. I didn’t quite get what was so cool about being first?!

I started to take swimming more seriously in the 10^th grade, training 3 to 5 times a week. My motivation back then was the fact I was quite short and skinny. My arm circumference would stay the same, all the way from the wrist to the shoulder.

The initial effect from the swimming was I grew taller. But that could also come as a result from the “PUBERITTY”, as my grandmother used to say.

This is when I swam mainly breaststroke, less backstroke and the least crawl.

How I became a swimming instructor

After some time I graduated from a ski instructor course. At the end of the season a colleague asked me:

“What are you going to do now?”

I told him I didn’t know. He suggested that I got qualified as a life-guard and looked for a seasonal job at the seaside. So I did.

I obtained the life-guard qualification and I found a job at the seaside. I had already mastered swimming in all styles. The crawl style contributed the most for my strength gaining.

When spring came, I started working as a life-guard at the Governmental Hospital swimming pool. I then graduated from a course in trainers’ social role. And I then started teaching swimming at the Governmental Hospital pool.

As I was teaching, I noticed there were both adults and children who were scared of going to the deep end of the pool. It turned out some of them had gone through incidents, others had an instinctive fear of water, and yet – they were very eager to learn swimming.

I noticed some repeating patterns and I developed a system how to overcome fear of water and learn swimming at the same time.

My swimming students

I have a student about 30 years of age, who had gone through a water incident in the sea as a child. For years she hadn’t allowed herself swimming deeper than shoulder level. But, as the time had passed, she had realized the immense benefits of swimming and she had taken the decision to overcome this childhood fear. At the beginning of our swimming sessions she was struggling even to dip her head under water. I gradually built trust in her, so that she would easily adopt the techniques I taught her, regarding how to move and breathe in water. I needed several months of water training with special attitude to help her overcome her fear of water completely. Thanks to my personalized approach, she now swims easily and comfortably in all styles three times a week.

The most intensive swimming lessons I’ve ever given were for a girl in her twenties who was recovering from an injury. She was a sportswoman, so movement and physical activity were a lifestyle for her. Because of her physical trauma, doctors had forbidden her to practice almost any possible sport – which was a tremendous shock for her – but they did allow her swimming. She would come to the pool on a daily basis, for 30 days in a row. After a month of everyday practice she had mastered swimming ideally.

I had another student suffering from asthma. Her doctors had recommended swimming lessons as a therapy. The girl was 9 years old at the time when she started her practice with me. Gradually, with each swimming session, her seizures grew fewer and fewer, until they disappeared altogether. However ironical it may seem, she even joined a chorus and became a lead solo singer.

Book a swimming lesson with me

If you’d like to book a private training session with me for yourself or your child, please call +359 886 27 29 28 – Svetlomir Vidulov. I guarantee professional attitude and attention geared to the individual character of each student.