I've been around water my whole life and can swim pretty well. But I'm actually a lazy swimmer and usually prefer swimming on my back & just letting my legs do most of the work. I can swim forever that way.
I’m a now-retired upper echelon competitive swimmer, and I hate kicking. I dreaded kick sets. Technically I can kick just fine, but it always seems a slow and inefficient way of getting across the pool. Like telling a runner s/he has to hop backwards.
I hate kicking drills, too. And I'm built very slender and 'weedy', and my glutes naturally want to do NOTHING in regard to any kind of activity. This is why I'm fairly fast b/c my strokes are technically decent, and I have broad (though skinny) shoulders, which helps. But training my lower body to any real power is a struggle.
Kicking is a breeze when you're on your back. It barely takes any effort to stay afloat, and only a little more to progress along at a leisurely pace.
Yeah, it's just not in my DNA to do "leisurely" I suppose. Which is why kicking frustrates me so. I can kick 100 yards faster than most non-competitive swimmers can swim it, but to me it feels dreadfully slow, and inefficient, and i hate it.
Lol, this reminds me of an amazingly absurd conversation I had with a patient. I was in the process of losing a lot of weight and she came in for an appointment and noticed how much leaner I was. She was interested in what I had done, and like everyone, assumed I had done some kind of hardcore exercise.
I said that I never exercised very vigorously thanks to my injuries, certainly not enough to lose a ton of weight, but that I had recently taken up doing laps in the pool. She thought it was awesome that I took up swimming until I explained that I was just doing nice slow, kick laps with a snorkel.
She looked horrified and said "Ugh, that's so slow"
and I was like "sure, but I'm just doing laps in a pool"
she grimaced and said "but slow laps"
I said "uh...okay...but fast or slow, who cares? It's not like I time myself"
Aghast she said "You don't???"
and I dumbfounded replied "Why would I?"
Still shocked she said "Well then what's the point of doing laps???"
I stared at her with a confused-dog-head-tilt and said simply "Exercise?"
This conversation then proceeds to get bloody bizarre as she starts talking about how she used to be a competitive swimmer, but since she stopped competing, she's gotten obese, and she knows she needs to exercise, but hates the gym. She says she wishes she was still swimming.
I said 'You could just...swim"
she looks at me puzzled and says "But I'm.not training for anything." To which I repeat slower "But you could just...swim."
Frustrated she insists "But I'm not training for anything!"
With brow furrowed I say "So because you are not training for anything, there's no point in swimming. But you love swimming, and hate the gym, and really wish you could exercise more, like when you were swimming."
"Right" she replies, as if I'm a moron who is finally understanding basic logic.
I stop for a good long pause and then say "But if you love swimming, and want to exercise, like when you were swimming, then even though you aren't training for an event, you could just do laps every day and get exercise."
"But I don't have anything to train for!" As if I'm the dumbest cow in the world.
"Sure...but you can still literally swim right? Like, you haven't lost the ability?"
"Well yeah"
"And swimming is great exercise?"
"Obviously."
"And you want to exercise more."
"Yeah, I need to lose weight."
"And you hate the gym."
"Hate it."
"Sooooo...why can't you just do some laps in the pool for fun and exercise? Just as an alternative to the gym?"
She then paused for a long time and looked me straight in the eye and said 'If I'm not training for an event, there's no point in swimming."
At this point I just gave up. But it became an inside joke with my assistant for years. Every time a patient says something patently absurd, one of us will comment to the other afterwards "But I can't swim because I'm not training for anything!"