When I was four years of age I attended a swimming club at Seven Islands in Southwark.
When I was four years of age I attended a swimming club at Seven Islands in Southwark. The pool was fairly large and was rarely crowded, that was one comfort for me. Seven Islands had many activities other than swimming, I myself did not choose to do swimming my mum had decided that I would benefit from it.
My first day at the club started in a shallow pool opposite a larger one. I already knew two people who came with me, that made me feel a little confident despite the crying of other children. We had two instructors a man and a women both were roughly in their thirties the man had brown hair and was quite tall, the women had blonde hair and was full figured and short. The children were either taller than me or shorter than me so I am not sure if they were the same age as me never the less I got acquainted with them all. The first exercises that we did consisted of getting our muscles ready to get into the water. After the exercises were finished we were allowed to jump in, the exercises were necessary to prevent us from getting a cramp in our leg or spraining our ankles. The instructors told us to practice kicking our legs whilst holding on to the ledge, this was very important if we wanted to swim properly. The instructors then handed out floats so we could further develop kicking our legs however most of the children used the floats to splash water at one another, because of this the women instructress decided to take one of the girls to a deeper part of the pool to do a different exercise because she was behaving sensibly with the floats unlike the rest of us, but when I saw this I became competitive. I tried to progress by listening to the instructor and not paying any attention to the other children until I eventually went with the instructress.
The day I learned to swim was a normal day, one month after I started. After school my mum brought me home to get my swimming gear ready for swimming, when I arrived at Seven Islands I was told that one of the instructors had gone on holiday, in his place was a new women who was tall and had brown hair and was from Australia. The new lady was nice and spoke softly. She and the other women decided to see if we could swim without assistance, she started with me first she held both of my ...
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The day I learned to swim was a normal day, one month after I started. After school my mum brought me home to get my swimming gear ready for swimming, when I arrived at Seven Islands I was told that one of the instructors had gone on holiday, in his place was a new women who was tall and had brown hair and was from Australia. The new lady was nice and spoke softly. She and the other women decided to see if we could swim without assistance, she started with me first she held both of my hands and told me to start kicking before I knew it she let go of my hands so I had to rely on moving them to support myself I then realized that I was actually swimming alone, after about three seconds I caught the ledge, the shock of it distracted me I could not believe it. When the instructress went on to other people I tried again this time using different styles of swimming I was confident with diving and front stroke. At the end of the session I was pleased with myself and so were my friends.
Three years after practicing and learning more and more I kept attending I never missed a session until finally the club moved to Walworth road, they gave each member an application form saying that each member acknowledged that the club was moving and that you would still attend. I decided not to stay on because I had already received my awards one of them was my Life Savers Award, and there were six others. I knew everything they could teach me.
My time at Seven Islands swimming club was interesting I learned many styles of swimming such as breast stroke, back stroke, diving, butterfly stroke, front stroke. My favorite one and the one that I was best in was diving, apart from one girl I was the best swimmer there. The thing that made swimming easy to learn was not many people went to the club so the pool was never crowded.
I was able to practice more when my primary school started taking our class to Evelyn Low Swimming pool, I was surprised to see how many people could not swim I was part of a minority that knew, I began to realize that this ability was an asset. I did not like the instructress at first because she did not teach us properly and she gave us exercises to do that were for beginners. After she realized that her exercises were not challenging us she gave us exercises that we could gain awards in.
The good thing about this instructress was that she helped me with butterfly stroke, she also encouraged us to swim deep underwater. Our exercises consisted of swimming around the pool, going through hoops under water and picking up plastic bricks from the bottom of the pool. I liked the pool because it was deep and no one except our class was in the pool with us, Evelyn Low my main achievement was that I learned how to swim under water and manage my breathing much better.
My next ambition was to go snorkeling, so when my aunt in California USA invited my family to come to her daughters wedding I could not wait to go to the beaches to snorkel.
My aunt advised us to cross the border to Tijuana in Mexico to go snorkeling that's were most Americans went. The beaches there were crowded, the guide took us on a boat to the reef with a dozen of Americans who were mostly teenagers. From the boat we could see colored fish gliding through the water it looked fantastic, it looked even better once we went under the water were I saw many varieties of fish I was certainly uneasy about the sharks but the worries passed. I was transfixed by the movement of the marine life, I felt calmer under water than above, to remind me of this adventure after my holiday I purchased a fish tank containing tropical fish although not the exact species I saw snorkeling.
My second hobby was martial arts, this was something from a very early age I wanted to master. What fascinated me about martial arts was the agility that martial artists had, I adored anything with a connection with martial arts I collected videos with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan in them.
The particular form of martial arts was tai kwondo this was more appealing to me than judo or kung fu because it concentrated on kicks rather than hand movement. There was a tai kwondo class local to were I lived, I asked my friend if he wanted to go to the class as well, I knew he would if I went. My friend and I were surprised to see that the instructor was an old man of oriental appearance I knew from the moment I say him that he was adept in martial arts. I believe that the quiet environment of the Bede centre allowed us to concentrate more on the task. The other students whom predominantly were older than me a few seemed slightly arrogant and tried to intimidate me but I did not let them, I knew I was better than all of them so I just ignored them eventually they realised who they were messing with when I had a few of them thrown out for smoking outside the class.
There was one thing that annoyed me about the session, about eighty five percent of the lessons were spent on exercises this was very tiring and it hurt badly for a month until I grew accustomed to this harsh rota of various exercises. I noticed a dramatic improvement in the height of my kicks and power in my kicks and the agility of my legs, I was pleased with myself. Eventually after roughly two months the instructor taught us more complex moves such as; how to block punches and kicks without effort, which parts of the body to aim for when kicking, different stances, positioning of the fists and different kinds of kicks according to your intensions. Tai kwondo is still a hobby of mine and I practice weekly.
I have learned and achieved a great deal due to swimming and tai kwondo, swimming has given me an insight of what I am capable of and what I can achieve if I practice and dedicate myself. Tai kwondo has undoubtedly increased my self confidence and taught me discipline.
Thomas Amajoutt