Guard Up! Swimming Is Self-Defense: Water Safety Tips for Jersey Shore Families
Grand Master Evan R. Henry explains why learning to swim, understanding rip currents and building water competency are essential survival skills for children and adults.
Swim to Survive: Why Learning to Swim Is Self-Defense Along the Jersey Shore and the World.
Water Is a Threat You Live Next To
If you live along the Jersey Shore, water is your neighbor. It's outside your window. It's at the end of your street. It's where your kids want to be every weekend from June through September. Water is beautiful and is fun to play in. However, water can also change your life in just a few seconds if you do not know how to swim.
Swimming Is Self-Defense
Self-defense is anything that keeps you alive! Awareness. Discipline. Situational readiness. And yes, swimming. When a wave knocks you down and pulls you under, no punch is going to save you. When a child slips off a jetty, no lecture is going to save them. Water competency saves you and your family.
Our Community Has a Water Problem
We need to understand this more than anything else when it comes to swimming. Black families have not historically had equal access to swim education as others in the past. Public pools were segregated, and the swim clubs were closed to us. Beach access was restricted among many other things! That history didn't disappear when the laws changed. It showed up as a gap in who learned to swim and who didn't. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention has found that Black children drown at higher rates than white children in this country. That is an access gap. It closes with us!
What Water Competency Means
Float on your back if you're tired. Tread water for a full minute. Swim twenty-five yards without stopping. Turn yourself over if you fall in facedown. Reach a wall, the shore, or a boat. That's the minimum. It's teachable at any age. Learn it or your kids learn it. I'd preferably love both parties to do so.
The Shore Has Its Own Rules
My father, SFC Edwin R. Henry of the US Army, told me a story about him in the ocean. He said to me, "Son, your father was almost done for in Hawaii. One day I went out for a swim. The ocean current grabbed me and pulled me in. I was absolutely powerless! I was lucky the ocean wave threw me on the beach. If it didn't, I would not have been there to raise you with your mother!"
As powerful as my father is, he was powerless to the ocean. You may say I don't swim and I am not going to the ocean or pool anytime soon. What if the next storm raises the ocean so much that it floods the very streets and houses we live in? This does happen, and I thank God it hasn't happened here like that in a long time. But it can! Do you remember Hurricane Katrina?
Rip currents pull straight out from shore. If you get caught, don't fight it head-on. Swim parallel to the beach until you break free, then swim in. Jetties look sturdy. They are not. Wet rocks are slick, and the tide is patient. Don't play on jetties. Don't let your kids either. Read the flags at every beach. Listen to the lifeguards, and if there are no lifeguards, don't swim!
Where to Start
The Brigantine Aquatic Center offers swim lessons and memberships. Local recreation departments run programs. Private instructors up and down the shore work with adults who never learned. Some churches host summer swim programs for families that can't afford private lessons. You don't need a fancy pool. You need a teacher and a commitment to show up. Start this week. Not next summer. This week.
Reflection
If you fell into the ocean right now, could you get yourself back to shore? If the answer is no, sign up for lessons before the end of the month.
For Speaking, Seminars, or Self-Defense Training, contact: Grand Master Evan R. Henry, Founder, New Creation Taekwondo • Senior Pastor, Infinite Hope Global Bachelor's Degree in Pastoral Leadership, Newburgh Theological Seminary. Follow @TheGrandMasterPastor on TikTok. Call Business number: (848-217-2202).
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