Swimming is a great aerobic exercise that will increase your heart rate and improve the blood flow throughout your whole body. There are many advantages that you can enjoy when swimming, for example, it can help you stay at a normal weight without putting extra pressure on your joints. Many people don't see the advantages because they think that swimming doesn't build muscle. Yet, it does, in fact, build muscle and help you burn fat and is an exercise that just about any person will be able to take part in.
12 Advantages of Swimming You Didn't Know
Swimming has many advantages over other forms of exercise. Here are some good reasons to take up swimming.
1. A Low Impact Exercise
When you swim, you put no pressure on your joints so the joints are protected from the strain and stress of pounding the pavement. Water aerobics classes can be taken by someone at any age and keeps you buoyant when in the water doing exercises. Many people wear flotation devices when they swim so that they don't have to struggle to stay afloat during the exercise.
2. Build Muscle Mass
According to a study of people who took part in an 8-week swimming program, they experienced an increase in triceps muscle mass by almost 24 percent. Swimming can help you tone your muscles and may even increase the mass of your muscles when you take part in it. This is one of the advantages of swimming that benefits both men and women.
3. Boost Cardiorespiratory Fitness
Swimming will help you build up your cardiovascular endurance. In studies of middle-aged people, swimming increased their oxygen consumption by 10 percent and built up their cardiac stroke volume which is related to heart strength by up to 18 percent.
4. An Alternative When Injured
One of those advantages of swimming is that injured athletes can partake in swimming as they recuperate from injury. It helps keep them in shape as they heal and can be a valuable part of the rehabilitation program. It uses the resistance of the water to help the muscles contract withoutstraining on the injured body part.
5. Keep You Flexible
Swimming required a lot of stretching, twisting, and reaching as you swim your laps. This increases your flexibility along with improving your cardiovascular fitness. Still, remember to stretch before and after swimming. Why not take such good advantages of swimming right now?
6. Lessen Inflammation
Swimming has excellent cardiovascular benefits and reduces the type of inflammation that results in a buildup of atherosclerotic plaque in the heart. When you reduce inflammation, you can decrease the risk of many different cardiovascular and other inflammatory conditions.
7. Help With Mental Health
Swimming can also reduce stress and increase brain capacity. Everyone has the capacity to suffer from excess stress and swimming can help to increase your brain capacity, as one of the advantages of swimming. Some neurotransmitters are released in the brain called endorphinsduring swimming.
Also as a happy sport, swimming helps you build up a natural high and makes you relaxed as you exercise. Swimming is similar to yoga in its relaxation-producing effects.
Swimming also improved hippocampal neurogenesis to help with stress relieving. When you swim, your brain is getting rid of stressed-out brain cells and building up stronger cells, which have been experienced by many high school boys or stressed people.
8. Burn Calories and Lose Weight
Swimming can help you burn calories effectively. While it is hard to figure out how many calories you actually burn during swimming as it depends on the intensity and your body's physiology. In general, you burn about 150 calories for every ten minutes you do intense swimming activity. For different swimming styles, the figures can vary. For every 10 mins, backstroke causes you to burn about 80 calories while freestyle burns 100 calories.
If you try to burn more calories, burst swimming in which you exercise heavily for a period of time helps, for example, swim about fifty yards before resting and then swim another 100 yards heavily. Keep this as a routine until you can swim for 300 yards before resting.
9. Relieve Asthma
One of the advantages of swimming is to help with asthma. The wet air you are exposed to in swimming allows your lungs to do exercise in an asthma-friendly atmosphere. Your lung volume increases and your asthma symptoms will be reduced by swimming. Give your children swimming lessons if you want to build up their lung capacity and keep asthma symptoms at bay.
10. Decrease Cholesterol
Swimming can provide you with the right ratios of bad and good cholesterol. The act of swimming will increase the HDL ("good") cholesterol levels and decrease the LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels meanwhile. If you can increase your HDL cholesterol by at least one percent, the risk of heart disease will decrease by about 3.5 percent. Also, the endothelium of your blood vessels will be more flexible when you swim. As one of the best advantages of swimming, it is showed that people who still swim in their 60s will have endothelium that is like that of people in their 30s.
11. Decrease Diabetic Risk Factors
Swimming also works to decrease diabetic risk factors. According to the American Diabetic Association, all diabetics need to get at least 150 minutes of weekly exercise in order to help their diabetes. For men who exercise to burn about 500 calories per week, they can decrease their risk of diabetes by six percent. Just 30 minutes of breaststroke swimming three times weekly will burn up 900 calories, which reduces the risk of diabetes by greater than 10 percent. Women fare better with a 15 percent reduction in diabetes risk in the same swimming program. For those who already have diabetes, swimming can increase the body's sensitivity to insulin.
12. Lengthen Your Life
One of the most surprising advantages of swimming is to lengthen your life. There are research studies on swimming indicating that swimming can prolong your life. A recent study of more than 40,000 men for 32 years showed that the men who engaged in swimming had half the death rate over men who chose not to exercise or who took part in running and walking.