When it comes to exercise, few options are better for you than swimming. Not only does the water prevent you from putting any weight on your joints, but it also can transform your entire body.
How does this work? Why does swimming do what it does? It’s more than just the mindset that comes with gliding through the water. Swimming can literally give you a profile that you’ll be proud of. Here's what you need to know, courtesy of My Fit Foods.
What are the benefits of swimming?
Spending some time in the pool swimming laps is always a good idea. Here are just a few of the many benefits of swimming.
Put Your Safety First
Swimming serves a important purpose: If you find yourself stranded in a body of water, you’ll need to be able to swim to find help. The more time you spend swimming, the better you’ll get — making it more likely that you’ll be able to get out of danger in an emergency.
All You Need is a Bathing Suit
Most sports require some sort of equipment. If you want to play soccer, you’ll need cleats, shin guards, and all of the right gear. The same is true for golf, football, baseball, and more.
For swimming? You just need to wear a bathing suit and get into the pool. Okay, you’ll need a towel, too, but that’s still much less of an ask than most sports out there.
It’s a Low-Impact Sport
Many gym exercises are high-impact. Spending time on the treadmill can cause knee pain, shin splints, and other injuries for those who are already prone to them. This is because you put weight on your feet — which absorb the impact of your movements — and that impact travels up the body.
Swimming is a low- to no-impact option that anyone can enjoy. You won’t be putting weight on any of your body parts because you’ll be floating in the pool.
You Have a Lot of Options
When you go swimming, you have a variety of workouts to choose from. You can do the backstroke, the freestyle, the butterfly, and so on. This allows you to pick the muscle groups that you’d like to exercise that day.
Plus, you can decide to swim quickly, doing sprints across the pool, or slow it down and give your muscles a bit of a chance to warm up gradually and do a recovery-style workout.
It Provides a Full-Body Workout
Swimming works out your entire body. Yes, you can choose a different stroke in order to change up your arm and shoulder muscle groups a bit, but your entire body will still get in a workout.
After all, you use your trunk muscles to stay afloat and straight in the pool, your legs to help propel yourself forward, and more.
It’s fun and functional — what could be better than that?
It Aids Stress Relief
It seems like everyone is stressed out these days, and those who aren’t tend to be the exception to the rule. Rather than allow stress to take over and make your life miserable, spend some time in the pool.
Swimming laps can put you in a zen-like meditative state, and studies have shown that regular exercise is good for relieving pent-up stress.
It Promotes Better Sleep
Yes, sleeping and stress tend to go hand in hand, with stress often negatively affecting your ability to sleep.
However, regular exercise not only expends energy, making you crave sleep in order to restore your energy. Of course, it also takes care of the stress that’s preventing you from falling asleep in the first place. It’s a win-win situation.
It May Helop Your Cardiovascular System
Combined with a healthy diet full of tasty foods that can all be found on a food pyramid or plate, swimming can improve your cardiovascular system. It’s an important component to getting healthier overall.
The more you work out, the stronger your heart and lungs will become. This makes you less likely to end up with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and everything else that comes with heart disease.
Stronger Muscles
As mentioned above, swimming can help you tone pretty much all of the muscles in your body. In addition, it can make those muscles stronger.
Since the water provides some resistance, you’re essentially give your muscles the same workout that you would via weight lifting. The only difference is that you won’t get the bulk that you will with weights.
These muscles are leaner, but just as strong.
How Can Swimming Transform Your Body?
Not only can knowing how to swim potentially save your life and give you a solid low-impact workout, but it can also transform your body. Here’s a quick breakdown of how swimming can change your overall body shape while helping you lose weight.
What Can Swimming Do for Your Body Shape ?
No matter which stroke you choose, the very act of getting in the pool and swimming can change your body shape. After several sessions, you’ll see a difference in your legs, abs, arms, and core, specifically.
- Legs: Your legs muscles will get a lot more sculpted as youswim. Since you use them in order to propel yourself around the pool, your thighs, calves, and all the muscles in between will get refined and toned.
The more you swim, the more you’ll see these positive changes to your leg muscles. Plus, you’ll be able to swim faster as you build these muscles.
- Abs: Believe it or not, swimming can give you the defined abdominal muscles that you’ve always wanted. The exercise is far more effective than stomach crunches and sit ups. Simply swimming laps in the pool provides you with that full body workout, abs included.
- Arms: One of the biggest differences that you’ll see in your body is in your arms and shoulders. These muscles and the ones in your upper back can be totally transformed after some consistent swimming sessions.
The reason why is simple: They do the brunt of the work as you move around the pool. To exercise different arm muscles each time, we recommend that you switch up your stroke every time you go to the pool.
- Core: Certain strokes, like the backstroke, can strengthen the muscles in your back, while others give you more defined chest, lower back, and glute muscles.
Is Swimming Good Cardio?
Not only can swimming give you plenty of toned and defined muscles, it can also provide you with all of the fat-burning benefits of cardio. After all, you’ll need to lose a bit of weight in order to see those new muscles.
- Reducing Belly Fat – A lot of us find belly fat annoying. After all, you can’t spot reduce fat, and many of us hold plenty of our extra pounds in our midsection.
While you could do all of the sit ups and crunches needed to get some defined ab muscles, your best option is swimming. The cardio that you get from spending time doing freestyle laps in the water will help you get rid of excess fat while giving you definition to reveal beneath it.
- Reducing the Size of Your Thighs: Another place where excess weight tends to hang out, your thighs will also benefit from swimming. Once again, cardio saves the day. When you combine that with all of the leg muscles that get fine-tuned by a swimming session, you’ll have leaner legs in no time.
Swimming Is Good for You
As you can see, swimming can transform your body in a number of ways. From providing you with some muscle tone and weight loss to improving your mental health, there are many reasons why you should consider getting into the pool.
Have questions about how swimming transforms your body? Contact us and ask away!
Sources:
Swimming - health benefits | Better Health
Health Benefits of Swimming | Healthy Swimming | Healthy Water | CDC
12 Major Benefits of Swimming That’ll Convince You to Take it Up in 2023 | Women’s Health Magazine
About Author: Mario Mendias
