Why Is Swimming Good for You? 10 Healthy Reasons To Start Swimming Right Now!
Why is swimming good for you, and why is it recommended for everyone?
There are tons of health reasons why swimming is great for you. You don’t have to swim daily, but if you can pack a few sessions in the week, that would be good.
So what are some of the benefits that you can enjoy when you swim daily? Here, we shall look at only 10 of them.
Why is swimming good? 10 powerfully healthy reasons
The time to start swimming is right now. However, you may be reluctant to start unless you know the benefits of swimming everyday. Here are ten of them:
1. Swimming works out the whole body
If you want a holistic workout, hit the swimming pool! From working the ab muscles, the leg muscles, the arm muscles and the back muscles… well, swimming leaves nothing behind!
One hour of swimming will have given you enough aerobic workout for your heart and lungs.
The core muscles, that is, the muscles that are attached to the spine also benefit a lot. That is why swimming contestants are so fit.
Unlike other workouts where you just target one or two muscle groups, with swimming, it is far different. You will work your way to holistic fitness with those wonderful backstrokes.
2. Does swimming tone your muscles? You betcha!
Come summer time, you will want a perfect beach body. Now, swimming can give you that awesome body.
If you have been feeling ashamed of your flabby upper arms and thighs, it is time to make a consistent swimming schedule. When you swim, you work against resistance.
The water presents the resistance. As you pull with your arms and kick with your legs, you will be toning your muscles beautifully. Remember, this water resistance has been replicated in the rowing machines with air resistance.
It helps tone muscles. Because water is more resistant, you will tone your muscles faster since you have to work harder. Swimming is also a set of many repeated moves.
Repetition creates perfection. Thankfully, this is an enjoyable kind of repetition so you will love every bit of it.
3. Belly fat – Can you lose belly fat by swimming?
We will not say it is a resounding yes because belly fat is nasty, you know, takes so little time to gain and so long to lose it.
While you will burn belly fat when you swim, it is not going to happen overnight. It will require you to be very consistent and disciplined.
While many people swim for fun, with some focus, you can lose weight. First, focus on swimming for 30 minutes at least.
As a beginner swimmer, it will be hard to make the 30-minute sessions. However, do not worry about it. Just swim for the duration that you can tolerate. You can keep increasing the swimming duration gradually.
4. It is a low impact exercise that is good for the elderly
Swimming is similar to riding a stationary bike or using a rowing machine. It is a low impact exercise that does not affect your joints.
If you are a senior or you have a condition like arthritis, engage in swimming. It will help you a great deal.
5. Enhance your lung health
This is especially important for people that have asthma. Swimming can help them because it enhances the heart and lung health.
When you swim, you are going to increase the capacity of your lungs. However, people with asthma are cautioned that swimming pools with added chemicals can also make their condition worse. Therefore, we would consider this a double-edged sword.
6. Burn calories – How many calories do you burn in 30 minutes of swimming?
There is no doubt that you will burn calories when swimming. However, the number of calories that you can burn depends on many things.
First, it depends on the swimming technique. Thankfully, you can use an online calculator to calculate the number of calories that you will burn.
The number of calories that you can burn also depends on your weight. Contrary to what many people might think, if you are leaner, you may not necessarily burn more calories.
Generally, if you weigh about 120 pounds and you swim slowly for 60 minutes, you could burn 405 calories. If you swim faster, you could burn 580 calories.
A heavier person of 160 pounds would burn 497 calories swimming slowly and 710 calories swimming fast for one hour. This is just a rough estimate but the calories figures come close to this.
7. Mood boost – What are the emotional benefits of swimming?
What are the emotional benefits of swimming? Well, there are so many of them but the most outstanding one is that it boosts your mood.
When you undertake any exercises, the body releases the feel-good hormones into your system. Also called endorphins, these feel-good hormones make you feel happier, energetic and even more positive.
If you feel stressed, it is because the stress hormone cortisol is in high levels in your system. To lower it, take a dip into the pool and enjoy the benefits of swimming everyday.
8. Swimming enhances your self-esteem
Imagine working your way from flabby to toned arms and legs! You will definitely feel good about yourself. To feel even better, keep shifting the milestones.
If you swim for 10 minutes, change that to 15 minutes after a few weeks. Keep trying different techniques and every time, you will feel a great sense of achievement.
9. Swimming prepares you for other water sports
Snorkeling, paddle boarding, surfing, scuba diving, rowing and other water sports are more enjoyable when you can swim.
After all, you feel confident in your ability. Let us just say that swimming is the bare basic of water sports and an incredible whole lot of fun. If you learn how to swim, you will also feel eager to learn other water sports.
10. Get better sleep daily – Does swimming improve sleep?
Yes, swimming, like any other exercise does enhance your sleep quality. If you have insomnia, take a swim daily and you will love the effect.
Regular aerobic workout helps your lungs, circulatory health, boosts mood and makes you happier. If you investigate keenly, you will see that these are the ingredients that you need for sound sleep.
These are just 10 benefits of swimming everyday. There are many more. If you would like to believe, start swimming today.
Why swimming in the morning is good
If you are an ardent swimmer, you might want to know whether swimming in the morning has more benefits than swimming in the evening. So, are there particular benefits of swimming in the morning? Apparently, there are!
It makes you happier and lifts the mood
Well, as they say in Africa in Swahili – siku njema huonekana asubuhi, which loosely translated means that a good day is seen in the morning.
If you swim in the morning, you are bound to get started on a good note. To support this, remember that exercise has a great effect on your well-being.
When you swim, your body is tricked into thinking that you are doing something awesome, incredible. Therefore, it releases the feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin.
When the level of the feel-good hormones goes up in your system, the level of the stress hormones such as serotonin goes down. Therefore, you feel happier, which basically sets the mood for your feelings pretty much in the rest of your day.
Swimming in the morning helps you beat fatigue
There are those days that you wake up feeling so sluggish and your energy levels have taken a dip. When you feel this way, a dip in the cold water can help to kick-start your energy levels.
Swimming can do what piping hot coffee cannot do, but if you take them both, they are an incredible combination.
The reason why you feel sluggish is that the blood circulation is a bit slow at night. However, this does not always mean that you should feel tired and sluggish in the morning.
If this happens too often, please see a doctor so that you can get a prognosis for poor blood circulation.
What we are talking about here is that at night when you are resting, the body does not need to work as hard to send oxygen and nutrients to different parts of the body.
The reason for this is because your level of activity is low. There are just those nights when you do not sleep too well.
On such days, you are going to wake up feeling fatigued, unhappy and irritable. If this happens, try taking a dip. This does these things:
- It takes your mind of yourself for a moment, as swimming is an attention-intensive activity
- It helps the muscles to relax
- It raises the heart rate (good cardio workout) so more blood, nutrients and oxygen can get to your tissues
- Swimming in cold water kick-starts the metabolism and this releases more energy
Swimming in the morning helps you to think clearly
There is something about the mornings, that just helps you to get your thinking cap on. Imagine swimming in the ocean and catching the beautiful sunrise.
This helps you forget your worries and problems instantly. It can be only a temporary reprieve but it really helps a lot. For swimming to relax you, you need to be deliberate about it.
Set out to enjoy your morning swimming routine. Once you do this, everything around you starts looking beautiful. You start to see the beauty in things, in people, in the outdoors and so on.
Is swimming good for a student?
Are there special benefits of swimming as a student? Well, certainly there are. If there are weight loss benefits, mental health benefits of swimming and others, as a student, you will love swimming.
If you are teaching a young student, say, like a toddler to swim, there are so many benefits.
Helps young students to improve their motor skills
Swimming can help young students enhance their motor and coordination skills. In return, this is going to make them better prepared for their class work.
Children love playing in the water. Teach them to swim as early as possible. In addition, they will never forget how to swim.
Improves memory and alertness
Swimming frequently is going to help with concentration, memory and alertness in class. Kids who get their cardio from swimming find it easier to concentrate in the class.
Many things bring this about, but chief among them is the enhanced blood circulation and more oxygen getting to different parts of the body, including the brain.
It helps them overcome fatigue
Students spend a lot of time sitting down at their desks. Also, learning is hard work. Nothing beats that stress and fatigue out of their bones and muscle like swimming during the weekend.
It is a vital safety skill
Swimming for students can help keep them safe if you live close to a large water body or in areas that receive torrential rainfall every year.
With heavy climate change, it is becoming harder to predict the weather. Children need to learn how to swim for survival.
According to the CDC, drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional death for children aged 1 to 14 years of age in the USA. This is why your children need to know how to swim.
Swimming can be a great team sport for children, especially when they have to compete against one another.
It can help draw even the anti-social students out of their cocoon. On the same note, it will help make your children competitive, a skill that they really need for classwork.
It is good for their health
Students need to stay healthy all the time. In addition to eating nutrient-packed foods, they also need to engage in low-impact exercises that can have a high impact on their health.
Swimming is the one type of exercise that can give you a full body workout! Because the life of students is pretty much sedentary with many hours of sitting down, they need to work out.
It can help students to lose weight easily. Swimming will work out the glutes, the core muscles, tone the abs, the biceps, and other parts of your body.
It also helps the heart rate being a cardio exercise. Also, swimming frequently will help with improving the circulatory health. Having to breathe in the water helps improve the lung health.
Swimming is a big confidence booster
Some students can suffer from low self-esteem especially when they do not shine in classwork. In such cases, swimming can help them to boost their confidence and self-esteem.
Being able to learn how to swim makes a student feel that he/she is good for something. It helps them develop the right mindset and this helps them in many of their day-to-day activities.
Advanced swimming activities such as treading water are great feats. Students enjoy such adventures.
Conclusion
We could go on and on about the benefits of swimming everyday. Men and women derive the same health benefits.
Children also enjoy incredible physical and mental health benefits. These benefits can go away when you stop swimming. Therefore, make swimming part of your lifestyle.
Besides, this is a skill that every one should have. It is also a lot of fun. For instance, knowing how to float in the water on your back, stomach or even vertically feels incredible.