Swimming is widely recognized by health and fitness professionals as a nearly perfect activity for improving aerobic fitness, flexibility, body strength, muscle tone, and coordination. Wear and tear on the body is an almost universal problem with any activity more strenuous than channel surfing. Swimming has the distinction of being the sport lowest in wear and tear, particularly if you use proper technique.
Coaches and trainers in virtually every sport acknowledge the efficacy of water exercise in various forms as an adjunct to their athletes’ training. Whether it’s a professional boxer using the natural resistance of water to make his punches more powerful, an Olympic 100-meter runner using water running to augment her sprint training, or a professional football or basketball player using water exercise as part of a physical therapy regimen, athletes in all sports are coming to water to improve their primary sports.
Swimming, quite simply, is the supreme form of water exercise. Challenging to the mind and the body, uplifting to the spirit and the flesh, swimming is a fascinating sport that can grab you, hold you, and keep you healthy for the rest of your life. “There are two things in existence that nobody thinks are bad for you—swimming and yogurt,” says Leonard Goodman in the Wall Street Journal.
Any exercise that raises your heart rate higher than 120 beats per minute for longer than 20 minutes improves the cardiorespiratory system. The cardiorespiratory system is the well-known system of heart, lungs, and blood vessels that takes oxygen from the air you breathe into your lungs and transports it to the individual muscle cells where it will be used. Oxygen enters the lungs, diffuses through the capillary walls, and then enters your red blood cells. Through a maze of various-sized blood vessels, the heart pumps these red blood cells, which are carrying their precious cargo of oxygen, to the capillaries that surround the muscle cells and fibers. Here, the transition from the cardiorespiratory system to the muscularsystem takes place.
Once the cardiorespiratory system delivers the red blood cells to a muscle cell, the oxygen diffuses across the muscle cell membrane and into the cell, where it helps produce energy for muscle contractions. The term aerobic metabolism identifies a complex set of chemical interactions that use fat, carbohydrate, and oxygen to produce energy for exercise. Aerobic conditioning causes a variety of adaptations within the muscle cell that improve the cell’s ability to perform work for extended periods. Swimming properly involves a greater percentage of your body’s muscle mass in aerobic exercise than any other popular activity. Cross-country skiing is the only other sport vying for this position.
Aerobic conditioning of any specific muscle occurs only when an exercise causes that particular muscle to contract repeatedly and consistently throughout the workout. It is no wonder that runners or cyclists who take up swimming find that, despite their excellent cardiorespiratory conditioning, swimming a few laps leaves them fatigued. They have spent time aerobically conditioning the sport-specific muscles of the legs but have done little or no conditioning of the upper body.
Flexibility Improving flexibility may be one of the greatest benefits of swimming. It is an important factor that allows people to participate fully in swimming well past ages where they must discontinue participation in other sports. Because of the positions and large ranges of motion that swimmers ask the body to move through when making proper strokes, virtually all people who swim regularly become more flexible.
Coaches and trainers in virtually every sport acknowledge the efficacy of water exercise in various forms as an adjunct to their athletes’ training. Whether it’s a professional boxer using the natural resistance of water to make his punches more powerful, an Olympic 100-meter runner using water running to augment her sprint training, or a professional football or basketball player using water exercise as part of a physical therapy regimen, athletes in all sports are coming to water to improve their primary sports.
Swimming, quite simply, is the supreme form of water exercise. Challenging to the mind and the body, uplifting to the spirit and the flesh, swimming is a fascinating sport that can grab you, hold you, and keep you healthy for the rest of your life. “There are two things in existence that nobody thinks are bad for you—swimming and yogurt,” says Leonard Goodman in the Wall Street Journal.
Aerobic Conditioning
If you canvas the ranks of fitness swimmers, you will find that a nearly universal goal is to improve aerobic fitness. Exercise intended to improve aerobic fitness affects two different yet related systems—the cardiorespiratory system and the muscular system—each of which has different conditioning components.Any exercise that raises your heart rate higher than 120 beats per minute for longer than 20 minutes improves the cardiorespiratory system. The cardiorespiratory system is the well-known system of heart, lungs, and blood vessels that takes oxygen from the air you breathe into your lungs and transports it to the individual muscle cells where it will be used. Oxygen enters the lungs, diffuses through the capillary walls, and then enters your red blood cells. Through a maze of various-sized blood vessels, the heart pumps these red blood cells, which are carrying their precious cargo of oxygen, to the capillaries that surround the muscle cells and fibers. Here, the transition from the cardiorespiratory system to the muscularsystem takes place.
Once the cardiorespiratory system delivers the red blood cells to a muscle cell, the oxygen diffuses across the muscle cell membrane and into the cell, where it helps produce energy for muscle contractions. The term aerobic metabolism identifies a complex set of chemical interactions that use fat, carbohydrate, and oxygen to produce energy for exercise. Aerobic conditioning causes a variety of adaptations within the muscle cell that improve the cell’s ability to perform work for extended periods. Swimming properly involves a greater percentage of your body’s muscle mass in aerobic exercise than any other popular activity. Cross-country skiing is the only other sport vying for this position.
Aerobic conditioning of any specific muscle occurs only when an exercise causes that particular muscle to contract repeatedly and consistently throughout the workout. It is no wonder that runners or cyclists who take up swimming find that, despite their excellent cardiorespiratory conditioning, swimming a few laps leaves them fatigued. They have spent time aerobically conditioning the sport-specific muscles of the legs but have done little or no conditioning of the upper body.
Muscular Strength Although swimming does not build huge, rippling muscles, even moderate-intensity distance swimming is excellent for improving strength and tone in several muscles, especially in the torso, shoulder, and arm. More experienced swimmers use high-intensity interval and sprint training to increase overall body strength. One of swimming’s advantages is in developing functional strength throughout the large ranges of motion inherent in the sport.
Flexibility Improving flexibility may be one of the greatest benefits of swimming. It is an important factor that allows people to participate fully in swimming well past ages where they must discontinue participation in other sports. Because of the positions and large ranges of motion that swimmers ask the body to move through when making proper strokes, virtually all people who swim regularly become more flexible.
Swimming is a great way to attain a healthy body composition and maintain flexibility.
Body Composition Much has been said over the years about whether swimming is a good way to get leaner. As with any form of exercise, the intensity with which you approach the sport determines, to a large extent, the results. You need only look at the evenly-toned, long-muscled bodies of swimmers mounting the blocks at any swimming competition to know that intense swim training can produce a body a person would be proud to wear almost nothing on. By the same token, there are plenty of people who go to the pool and just piddle around, applying the bare minimum of effort to slowly move from one end to the other. Those people are likely to complain that swimming does nothing for them. If they were to put the same amount of effort into running, cycling, or any other sport, those people would most likely have the same complaint.
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