Why Swimming is The Best Sport? 8 Benefits Of Swimming & More

Swimming is an aerobic form of exercise that elevates heart rate and breathing rates and, thus, challenges our cardiovascular system. Performing aerobic exercise for a prolonged period of time helps to strengthen the heart muscle and improve its efficiency.

Recent research indicates that regular swimming lowers blood pressure, improves resting heart rate, reduces the risk of heart disease, and improves overall cardiovascular health.

When we engage in aerobic activities like swimming, our blood vessels enlarge, allowing more blood to flow through them to deliver nutrients and oxygen to the muscles. That allows us to exercise for longer without fatiguing immediately.

Swimming has been proven to increase blood flow rate and velocity while keeping blood pressure low. Hence, it's an excellent sport that improves the overall efficiency and health of your circulatory system and battles multiple health conditions like arterial stiffness.

Likely, most people have heard that swimming is a whole-body workout, and that's true. The unique feature of swimming is that it engages quite literally all the muscles: from small stabilizing ones to large muscle groups. And what many people don't realize is that swimming, unlike other sports, gives you an opportunity to tone your body and improve endurance. All at once. The best of it: it suits people of all ages and fitness levels.

Among other health benefits, multiple studies have confirmed that swimming has been an effective form of exercise in reducing body fat percentage. So, if you are looking to start exercising for weight loss, consider substituting a couple of gym workouts for swimming. It's a nice way to differentiate your training.

Want to increase muscle mass? Unlike everything you've heard, it's actually possible. Consider getting equipment and adding more resistance when you swim. Differentiate your training by swimming shorter sprints with and without resistance. That will activate your short twitch muscles, and eventually, you'll see a significant difference in your muscle size.

We know that the breaststroke kick is one of the most important propulsive forces in the stroke, but what about the arm pull?

For a long time, the swimming community and the leading coaches thought that arm pull was not something they had to focus on. The upper body and its role in the breaststroke was minimized until the latest research discovered that "catching" the wave after the recovery phase and performing a solid arm pull improved the time in competitive breaststroke swimmers.

Thus, it's important to take time to work on your breaststroke pull and leg kick equally.

Swimming is not all about muscling through the water to propel yourself forward. It's a fine balance between engaging certain muscles at different phases of the stroke while constantly maintaining a good body alignment in the water. And that requires a different level of balance and coordination that we need on the land. But don't get discouraged.

Anyone can develop those skills in the pool with enough training and practice. And if you can't master it all perfectly on your own, consider taking a few swimming lessons to learn more about mechanics.

The more you practice, the higher the level of body awareness you'll achieve. The best of it: increased coordination and balance acquired in the water will positively impact how you move on land.

We've heard for decades that regular exercise improves mood, and, in many cases, it's even used as a therapeutic treatment for various mental disorders. A study published in 2019 indicates that among all the forms of exercise, aerobic workout has the biggest impact on your mood. In fact, it's been proven as a successful treatment for major depressive disorder. Since then, scientists have been searching for one exercise that has the biggest impact on our mental health.

Multiple studies have investigated different sports and have come to the conclusion that aquatic sports have the highest positive effect. As a matter of fact, one study conducted swim classes to combat symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and alcohol and drug abuse. The results have shown that swimming at low intensity is the best workout not only for your body but also for your brain.

Many adults fear learning to swim due to their age. Most think that because they've never acquired water skills at a young age, it's a hopeless case. That's not true.
Learning to swim can be a long process, but it's sure rewarding. If you've tried to learn but failed or quit, we encourage you to seek professional help.

Numerous studies have proved that anyone can learn to swim with the proper instruction and enough practice time. Once you acquire the water skills, they'll stay with you for life and open up new fun opportunities aquatics have to offer.