Swim for Your Health
Swim for Your Health
Floating, front crawl, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke or freestyle – no matter how you get around in the water, swimming is the perfect cardio workout. The benefits of swimming are vast and regular pool attendance can improve your overall health.
Here are 6 amazing benefits of swimming:
- It’s a full-body workout
One of the major benefits of swimming is that when you jump into the pool, you work your entire body. You may think it’s only your arms and legs being worked, but that’s not the case. Swimming increases your heart rate without stressing your body, tones muscle, builds strength, builds endurance and engages almost all of your back muscles.
30 minutes in a pool is worth 45 minutes of activity of similar intensity on land.
- It’s easy on your joints
Another benefit of swimming is that water supports up to 90 percent of the body’s weight. Your joints only have to deal with 10 percent of their usual weight load, which lowers your chance of injury. So, if you have mobility issues with land-based exercise, you may still be able to swim to stay active. You can perform a high intensity swimming workout to get your heart rate up or perform a relaxed routine if that’s more your vibe. Either way, it’s unlikely to aggravate your joints and will help your overall health.
This makes swimming a great option for people of all ages and skill levels.
- It burns up calories
Since swimming is a full body workout, it is one of the most effective ways to burn calories! Swimming at a relaxed pace burns around 200 calories in just half an hour (the same amount of calories as jogging without the joint stress). And if you are a faster swimmer, you would burn even more!
- You can swim every day
Many people swim everyday seeing that it is gentle enough on the body that you can swim at a reasonably high intensity (heart rate-wise) every day without risking injury. Of course, rest days are always recommended.
- It improves your mental health
We can all agree that life gets hard and stressful, swimming regularly can reduce anxiety and depression and lower your stress levels. When swimming, it’s just you and the water; the outside world is left outside the pool. You can’t scroll on Instagram, respond to business emails, or whatever you do in your digital time, so your brain naturally switches away from these. Swimming forces you to power down from constant digital stimulation and relax your mind.
- It helps you get better sleep
Swimming has been linked to improved sleep duration and better sleep quality. We need sleep to allow our body and brain to recharge for the days ahead of us. Plenty of sleep also helps your body remain healthy and fight off diseases. When swimming regularly, plus good sleep time, you can improve your quality of life and mood.
Remember, regular swimming will improve both your health and outl