When it comes to swimming, I’m like a fish out of water. So this year, I finally decided to master this potentially lifesaving skill.

I started day one of my adult swimming lessons at a Capital Region YMCA in Guilderland. Swim instructor Allison Walkley helped get me out of my head and into the water.

“It also might be this internal stigma that you might have, that I'm too old to swim and everybody I know can swim, and that not true,” said Walkley.

She said weak swimming skills among adults is not uncommon, especially for those who didn’t have access to pools, lakes or beaches growing up.

In my case, my parents gave me a few lessons as a kid, but I never truly developed the skill as a teen. Before diving in head first, we started with simple techniques, like learning how to exhale underwater and learning to float.

“Just getting comfortable with floating and ears getting wet and our bellies going up,” Walkley said as she interacted with me in the water.

Something I had no clue how to do at first, but Walkley had my back the entire time.

By the end of the hour-long session, I began to get the hang of it. Now I’ll likely not become an Olympic swimmer at the end of it, but the fact that I’m starting to have more confidence in and around water has me ready to dive into my next lesson.

Check out YMCA.org for available lessons.