37% of adults can't swim across a pool.

[Sunset Lady]

An estimated 37% of U.S. adults can't swim 24 yards, the length of a typical recreation-center pool, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adults—including those who are able to swim—make up more than 70% of drowning deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC.

Adults may miss out on learning to swim if they come from a culture where swimming isn't widely popular, or they grow up in metropolitan areas without easy pool access. Others are simply afraid—a fear sometimes fostered by overanxious parents or a terrifying incident early in life. Teaching late learners tends to take longer and requires different techniques than those used with children.



Joseph Riggio, who lives in Brooklyn, signed up for swim lessons , where his biggest hurdle has been overcoming an intense fear of the water. He says his father believed the best way to protect his son was to make him afraid of the water. Mr. Riggio recalls a trip to Coney Island when he was about 7 years old in which his father pushed him under the water repeatedly.

"After he threw me into the water the third time, I stayed down, and then he pulled me up. I was choking and coughing up water," says Mr. Riggio, owner of New York Pizza Suprema, a restaurant in Manhattan.

From then on, learning to swim became a problem for Mr. Riggio. He tried taking lessons as both a child and adult but couldn't overcome his phobia.

"Yes, it's embarrassing, but I'm going to be more embarrassed if I'm not a good swimmer but my children are," Mr. Riggio says.

The process of learning to swim can be slow and frustrating for adults who, unlike children, are "very results focused," says John Fitzpatrick, owner and head coach of a swim facility, Chicago Blue Dolphins.

Mr. Fitzpatrick first teaches adults how to float and glide by kicking off the side of the pool. "These activities—while fundamental and critical to them being successful—do not seem to them like they're swimming," he says. As a result, the adults tend to get frustrated with their seemingly slow progress.

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