10 Hidden Benefits of Swimming
Everyone wants to be an Olympic swimmer. But luckily, you don’t have to be an Olympic swimmer to benefit from the sport. People of all ages, from all backgrounds, and with various levels of experience can benefit from swimming. Swimming is one of the few sports you can do from a young age and all the way up into your 90s and beyond.
Why not jump in? It’s not too late to gain from the hidden benefits of swimming. Swimming is perfect for your mental health and physical health. Water is a low-impact sport that provides more resistance than dryland exercises and it has a therapeutic cooling effect on the body that contribute to its many benefits. It truly is the perfect sport. Here are 10 of the sport’s less obvious benefits:
1. Swimming Improves Social Well Being
Swimming is very much a social sport. Swimmers of all ages can take classes together, train together, or work with a coach in the pool. Even if you have a pool at home, it is where you gather with your friends and family. A study revealed exercising and socializing together leads to improved mental health. Participants in the study had lower levels of anxiety and depression than their peers did.
2. Swimming Teaches Goal Orientation
Swimmers become goal-oriented in their personal and professional lives. Swimming gives kids and adults something to strive for. Whether it is kicking a kickboard across the pool, improving a lap time, or recovering from an injury with water rehabilitation, setting goals and achieving them is the key. The skills swimmers learn in the pool to realize and achieve such goals are skills that can and will be used out of the pool as well.
3. Kids Who Swim Become Active Adults
Swimming is an important activity to help combat the childhood obesity rates, and it is fun too. Swimming has all the three elements of physical activity recommended to keep kids healthy: endurance, strength, and flexibility. Swimming provides kids with the tools, skills, and dedication to maintain healthier lives as adults.
4. Swimming Makes You Smarter
Regular exercise, such as swimming, improves memory function and thinking skills. This is good not only for the classroom and work, but it is beneficial for us as we age too. Regular exercise reduces inflammation and insulin resistance in the brain, which fosters new brain cell growth. Swimming also improves mood, anxiety, and stress, which increases the brain’s ability to think more efficiently.
5. Swimming Teaches Team-Building Skills
Swimmers on teams or in swim classes have better team-building skills. Swimmers learn to work together, to encourage each other, to communicate, and to become leaders. All of these skills translate into effective leaders in adulthood. Team-building skills encourage collaboration, goal orientation, inspiration, strategy development, and coordination, which all result in successful careers and professional relationships.
6. Swimming Burns More Calories than Jogging
When you compare swimming to running, you can burn more calories swimming laps around the pool than you can running laps for an hour. One hour of vigorous lap swimming can burn as much as 715 calories. The same amount of time running at 5 mph burns only 606 calories.
7. Swimming Slows Down Aging
There is no secret pill to living longer, but the pool is like the fountain of youth. Regular swimming can delay the effects of aging by reducing blood pressure, increasing muscle mass, improving oxygen and blood flow to the brain, and increasing cardiovascular health. Swimming can also improve physical strength and balance in seniors. Seniors who suffer from joint pains can hit the pool to increase flexibility and to reduce joint inflammation. Lastly, this low-impact sport is easier on the body.
8. Swimming is Good for Asthma
Swimming is great for people who suffer from chronic lung conditions such as asthma. Asthma sufferers, especially those with sports-induced asthma, can experience trouble because the loss of heat and moisture in the bronchial tubes causes the tubes to contract. This happens when the air is dry and/or cold outside. Swimming is the best exercise for asthma patients because the moisture from the water replaces the moisture expelled during vigorous breathing.
9. Swimmers are More Confident
Swimming is a confidence-building sport. Early evidence from an ongoing study out of Griffith University in Australia revealed that young swimmers are more confident than their non-swimming peers. This is also true for competitive and non-competitive adult swimmers. Swimming teaches confidence in the pool and in the open water, which translates to confidence on land as well.
10. Minimal Gear
Swimming is one of the best sports, as it does require minimal gear! You can workout with only a swimsuit and goggles!
It’s never too early or too late to start swimming. Jump in and have fun. Your life, health, and well being depend on it.
Explanation is worth.. Thank you
As an old swimmer…..i agree… it has helped me.cope with all sorts of lifes numerous problems… without my swimming background i would never have coped.
As a competitive swimmer in my teens….that dedication and hard work moulds you.
I have made it being a single.mother
Cancer and what ever else
And i still swim at the age of 60……
Retired cellular biologist, infectious diseases, Global Mgr. Pfizer
Agree with you. We had swimming pools at our different homes = swimming along time. Kept up when work kept me really busy: just took a dive before work and a dive after. Added weight room workout to benefit swimming abilities. Good shoulders + back muscles = said “good-bye to nerve pain stemming cervical vertebrae forever. No pain!
Now in mid-60’s and just don’t look like it.
No diseases ~ not any of them.
Cope with peace passing all understanding + REM sleep + whole foods etc.
Increased cellular telomers again. Feels good!
Marriage forever: good health habits transmitted to honey. No longer sleep deprived. Interested in being better health = sees the benefits.
No one else tried to make retired Marine healthy + happy! Ppl can.be ugly… not here.
THE BEST THING: CAN EAT WHATEVER i WANT – WILL BURN IT OFF!
Happy home,
Don’t call yourself old. I’m a63 yo swimmer, former competitor swimmer too like you. Was a single mum too. We are not old, just getter older .
very sweet inspirational thanks dear
Very inspiring to hear
I am 60 as well and just got back to swimming after the gym opened. I can feel myself getting stronger already. Love the backstroke!!
The article is very inspiring and informative to say the least.
I’ve been swimming on and off for 93 years. Since I was not a fast swimmer, I soon learned that distance swimming was so satisfying. The YMCA in Buffalo, NY offered awards/buttons etc. after one swan 50 miles over a period of time. The laps were registered each day and accumulated. I have 6 of those awards during those years in my early adult life. I worked/lived overseas and everywhere there was a pool. After retiring, my clubhouse here in Florida has a very large pool. I had to quit tennis I loved but swimming continues. So grateful for swimming all these years.
My swimming complements my running and biking.
When I started I would go 50 yards and break. Then 4,then 6 and so on. Now I regularly get in 2 miles or more in less than an hour and a half. And have personal best of 3 miles in an hour and 55 mins.
At 67, and having spent most of my 60’s with Parkinson’s disease, I have found such strength and joy in freestyle swimming and deep water running. The muscle coordination these activities require, combined with the water resistance, stops my tremors in their tracks. During that hour or so in the pool, I feel like I don’t have Parkinson’s. It’s a miracle!
You rock! Swimming is the best
I was swimming twice a week when diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), in 2015. I was told I had 3-5 years to live. I started swimming every day. In 2017 I placed 2nd in 50 butterfly at the National senior games. I’m still alive, seven years from diagnosis, and still swimming every day.
Hi
Hi jossy ma
My wife is a competent swimmer but she has no confidence outside of a swimming pool.
I am a non swimmer, I have no intention of learning as I know it will be of any benefit to me
What a strange comment
I meant to say my wife lacks confidence outside of a swimming pool or sea.She is a competent swimmer and a Rescue Diver. However I can see no benefit in me learning to swim as I have plenty of confidence, I don’t need to LEARN to walk as my form of exercise and don’t go near water.
In fact my wife doesn’t bother to go a pool any more as she sees no benefits considering she would swim 3 or 4 times per week.
.
Correct!! :>
Hi..I would like to share ..I took up swimming 4years ago.after had my both hip replacement..now I’m 70years old….I enjoyed every moment swimming n jogging in d pool..which I cannot do it too long on dryland.. swimming can help all my joint pain ..no regret learning how to swim..will continue swimming 3 times a week as long as I can..which make my life happy..n can feel more healthy now…
I like the part where it says team building, being in an healthy club is also important, I’ve been swimming competitively for 5 years, recently I quit the swim team I was in. My former team was a toxic team, especially being a girl when you swim faster than your teammate what happens is bullying, they will not talk to you unless you make a mistake. Being in a team where swimming fast is wrong and swimming slow means getting yelled by the coach, my former coach was called Stephan Widmer apparently he is a very pro coach, when I went up to him and talked up bullying I showed him evidence of what the girls said to me. He said I will look into the evidence and get back with you in a week, it’s been 4 month already. I heard from one of my guy teammates he told me that Widmer said that he’ll not do anything about. Swimming in a not toxic team is really important! If your in a team that is toxic plz leave it’s not worth it!
It’s cool that you elaborate on how swimming helps children grow up to be healthy adults. I want my kids to develop a healthy lifestyle from a young age, so I’m thinking about hiring someone to build a custom swimming pool in our backyard next month. I’m going to search for a good custom pool builder in the area that I can employ.
https://wandwlandscaping.com/swimming-pools/
I am 65 years old and I swim 2000 meters (freestyle with breast stroke turns) every weekday morning religiously. So far I have used the distance swimming to raise charitable donations for American Cancer Society and for Leukemia and Lymphoma.
I feel I am tremendously lucky to be so fortunate to be in a position to do this, and feel that doing so enhances my life tremendously physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Hi
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Surfing is also really good. Diving too. The ocean is wonderful.
As someone who suffers from Asthma, i can agree that regular swimming really does help. I didn’t realize just how much until i stopped swimming as regularly and my asthma got really bad.
I agree swim is better than runing My age is 66 Years I swim since 2009 (14 years) regular daily six days a week 1200 to 1500 Mtr. One hour Swimm I fill like my age is only 35 years
It’s cool that you elaborate on how swimming is a great way for kids to get exercise. I want to make sure that my two kids have a fun way to stay physically active this summer, so I’m considering hiring a contractor to install a swimming pool in our backyard next month. I’m going to look for a good swimming pool contractor in the area that I can hire.
https://www.odlpools.com/
Swimming burns more calories than jogging…
Can’t compare “vigorous” swimming to jogging at “5mph”. Relative to the sport/intensity, running burns more calories than swimming. I’m sure if you pulled the data from Garmin/Strava you would see that generally people burn more calories running vs. swimming.
it is true its nevr to late not to start swimig .
Cleans the heart, the soul and the skin.
I have been swimming for 40 years, i AM 62 by now and keep swimming 1500 metters five times a week. I have two heap replacements and feel great, i can take long walks once in a while, trying not to abuse. My life is reading, writting, watching films, going out with Friends and gathering with family and i can’t SEE it all without swimming. I usted to go to different clubs but i moved to a building with a 25mts pool, so it’s easier just to take the elevator to get to the pool. Now i AM worried because in México City we are running out of water and here they are talking about closing pools.
these are really good facts! thank you so much…
My dear v old late uncle had a cold bath every morning ! Xxx