The advantages of swimming over other forms of exercise are myriad. Heading up the list may be that swimming is fun. As will be discussed in Chapters 6 and 14, there is an almost infinite variety of ways to exercise as you swim. You can kick, using only your legs; pull, using only your arms; use any of the four competitive strokes; and employ any of a variety of training aids. You can use an assortment of drills or focus on techniques that will strengthen particular parts of your body. But there is no swimming activity that will cause you pain (Gain, No Pain! is the swimmers’ motto), and most will give a special refreshing and sensual experience that only hydrotherapy—a sort of return to our origins—can provide.
Another important benefit is that swimming does not leave you hostage to the weather. Although you can not swim outdoors throughout the year in all parts of the country, you can always find an indoor pool. Especially pleasurable in summertime, when you are most eager to be more active, swimming comes with its own body-cooling apparatus. In fact, a high percentage of the strain on your heart during out-of-water exercise is brought about by the body’s need to have blood pumped close to the surface so that it can be cooled. This is especially so, for example, if you are running outdoors on a hot, humid day, when evaporation of perspiration cannot do the whole cooling job. But the pool provides its own heat sink, as engineers would put it, absorbing all the heat you can produce as fast as you can produce it, leaving the heart to concentrate on responding to muscle demands for energy.
You can vary the distance you swim and the amount of rest you give yourself. You can develop skill at all four competitive strokes. By timing your swims, you can keep an accurate record of your progress in the various strokes.
Compare this bountiful variety with the boredom of running. Basically, there is only one way to run: put one foot in front of the other. If you do it slowly, you’re walking; do it a little faster, and you’re jogging; go faster still, you’re running. That’s about it. Of course, you can change your distance and the ups and downs of the terrain, if your neighborhood provides such variety, but basically running affords only one way of exercising, and it works your legs primarily. In contrast, swimming exercises the entire body.
Consider these other benefits of swimming:
• It provides the best overall fitness and does so with minimal assault on body parts, even on formerly unused muscles and joints. Here is an exercise for a lifetime. You can start swimming at age 8, 38, or 108 and continue to reap the benefits as long as you live.
• It helps you develop and maintain an ideal body, one that not only looks good but is strong, flexible, supple, better able to resist disease, and quicker to recover from illness or injury.
• It will help you control your weight and, more important, the percentage of your body that is fat.
• It will decrease stress, increase alertness, improve mental functioning, even enhance self-esteem.
• Research shows that it will improve your love life (see Chapter 11). You will find yourself making love more often and enjoying it more, no matter what your age.
• Physiologically, it will allow you to turn back the hands of time. Part of the reason you will derive all these benefits is that swimming will transform your body into that of a much younger person. And it will keep you young! As long as you swim, your body will display the physical attributes of a person many years your junior.
• The changes your body undergoes will help you resist the ravages of disease, such as diabetes, asthma, arthritis, heart disease, possibly some forms of cancer, and many other major and minor diseases. And if you do fall ill, the widespread benefits swimming provides your general health will improve both your odds and speed of recovery.
• Finally, I am sure you will be happy to learn that epidemiological evidence seems to confirm that swimmers live longer, although just how much longer is still being debated by experts. What is not debated is that the quality of your life will improve dramatically.
In the next three chapters, you will see how swimming can help bring about all these changes for you and how it can help you live a longer, fuller life.
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