Swimming Is A Great Way To Improve Your General Fitness

When summer finally arrives, the beaches fill and people want to swim in the lakes, the rivers and the sea. But whether the sun's out or not, swimming is an excellent form of exercise. It's also enjoyable, and if you're a strong swimmer you'll enjoy your holidays more.

Many of us are pushed for time, and we need an exercise system that isn't complicated, doesn't take forever to learn, and isn't overly specialized. We'd quite like to get our cardio and strength and endurance training done all together at the same time.

There are several systems that offer this, and they share 'high crossover' - being good at them makes you better at other things, but other things don't necessarily prepare you for these activities. Swimming is one of those activities: while swimming prepares you fairly well for a range of other general activities, other things don't cross over so well to the pool. That's normally a sign that it's an activity we should be considering.

The key benefits of swimming are:

Improved muscular strength and joint health

Swimming involves a mixture of strength, mobility, endurance and cardio challenges. Swim regularly and your joints will become more mobile and relaxed, and you'll lose fat and build muscle.

Mental health benefits

Swimming has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. The rhythmic nature of the strokes, coupled with the calming effects of water, can lead to a meditative state. Additionally, the endorphin release from physical activity can elevate mood and boost overall well-being.

Improved flexibility 

Your flexibility will improve as your muscles get stronger from swimming, because of the large ranges of motion involved.

Improves posture and balance

Swimming strengthens the core muscles, which are vital for good posture. Additionally, water-based exercises challenge our balance in a unique way. Over time, this can lead to better posture, balance, and coordination, reducing the risk of falls and related injuries.

Better heart health

The heart is a muscle. As such, it can be trained to have better strength and endurance, much as any other muscle can be. The mix of endurance, strength and aerobic demands that swimming imposes means that your heart will be pushed to become stronger, reducing the risk or heart attack or other heart problems.

Weight control

Especially if you're overweight already, swimming is ideal. Overweight people often struggle with the impact involved in land-based exercise, and damaged joints will hold back your fat loss efforts. Swimming means the water supports you and there's much less strain on your joints, so it's a great choice if you're trying to lose weight. Once you're at  health weight swimming is a good way to keep on top of body composition, encouraging muscle growth and helping to reduce fat.

Improves lung capacity and breathing control

Regular swimming can enhance the efficiency of the respiratory system. It teaches controlled breathing and can increase lung volume over time. This can benefit not only athletic performance but also overall health by improving oxygenation of the body.

Asthma

This doesn't hold true for everyone: some asthmatics will find the chlorine in swimming-pool water actually triggers their asthma. 

Sounds like it's time to take the plunge!

You can usually find adult swimming classes in your area by internet search or contacting pools, but it's not a bad idea to start with a simple guide to how to swim. If you can already make headway in the water, but your stroke could do with some cleaning up, read on!

Four Main Strokes Or Styles Of Swimming

There are four main 'strokes' or styles of swimming. These are backstroke, breast stroke, front crawl and butterfly stroke.

Obviously, you do backstroke lying on your back. Breast stroke is the least athletically demanding stroke for most people and many people consider it to be the easiest to learn. Back stroke is very economical once learned. Butterfly stroke is the hardest and most athletic - and most impressive -stroke.

Here's how do do the four main strokes.

Backstroke

Backstroke is one lying on the back. While many of us have made up our own backstrokes, there is a 'proper' way of doing backstroke.

A true backstroke is done almost like rowing with one arm at a time: yo'u'll lift your arm overhead and make contact with the water with your arm almost straight, then pull the arm down through the water under you, bending it as you move so that it's at about 90 degrees when it passes under you.

With our legs, you'll 'flutter kick' - the sam small, repetitive movement of the whole eg from the hip that you use with front crawl.

Breast stroke

Breast stroke may be the slowest and least athletically demanding of the classic four swimming strokes, but you an still get a good workout doing it and it can be a strong and comfortable stroke for longer swims.

In stage one, you'll reach forward with your hands and arms. At the same time, you'll do your kick, a frog-like movement where you draw your legs up behind you and out, then extend them outward and bring them together - the sort of movement a frog makes when it jumps. Because breast stroke requires more hip flexibility than many people realize until they attempt it, it's possible to find this stroke the hardest apart from butterfly.

Stage two, you'll pull your arms down through the stroke. At this point your legs are straight out behind you. Sweep out your arms, pull them around and then push forward as you stretch out your body and begin your kick.

Alternate pulling and kicking, and when you're at the top of the stroke, when you pull your arms back, your face will naturally rise out of the water. At that point, you can take your breath. Some people swim a modified breast stroke in which the head never goes underwater, but this greatly reduces the power and efficiency of the stroke. It's better to learn to breath within your stroke.

Front Crawl

The front crawl is typically the fastest stroke.

You're 'paddling' yourself through the water, like a canoe, and your legs are only really doing enough work not to get in the way.

When you swim front crawl, you want your body almost all underwater, but your head should be relatively high. You're going to rock from side to side. Start the stroke by reaching forward with the leading arm, with the elbow higher than the forearm and the fingertips leading - the way the tip of a paddle would lead. Pull the arm down and along your body as the other arm rises out of the water. Because the crawl is a fast stroke done well, some people start off trying to do it fast, but if you try to do it well, speed will come. Your feet should kick from the hips with your feet and ankles relaxed and you should use six kicks to every arm pull. 

Finally, a word about breathing: the crawl means you're face down in the water, so you breathe when your face comes sideways out of the water as you roll from side to side. It's best to breathe after an odd, rather than even, number of strokes, since otherwise you'll be breathing on the same side every time and this discourages good body rotation. 

The butterfly stroke

Butterfly requires considerable flexibility, mobility, stability and strength - athleticism, in fact - in pretty much every area of the body. It's a tough stroke and most people will probably never do it, but if you decide to learn it the benefits are there.

We'll talk about the kick first. You make a 'dolphin' type motion through the whole length of your legs from your hips. It's referred to as the 'dolphin kick,' and it's unique to butterfly. The arm stroke is like two front crawls at once, and as such it takes a healthy shoulder girdle to do it without injury.

The breathing in butterfly stroke is done after a given number of strokes, often three, when the rhythm of pull and kick come together to drive your head and upper body out of the water.

Learning to swim is a lifetime's study in itself, but it's also something you can get competent at in just a few lessons, and from there you can take it anywhere with you.

See Also: Swimming And Contact Lens Safety

If you think I've hit the nail on the head - or if you think I've hit my thumb - why not get in touch through the comments section below?