The Beauty of Swimming: A Sport For Everyone
When it comes to swimming, everyone wants to be like Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky. Gliding through the water like nothing and making swimming look easy. However, swimming isn’t always about being the best. It can be a great source of exercise for people of all ages who aren’t into swimming competitively.
One of the benefits to swimming according to Healthline, is that it works out your whole body. From your arms, all the way down to your legs. With the different types of strokes, you’re activating different muscles. Regardless of how much time you spend in the pool, whether it be swimming from 30 minutes to two hours, you will reap some benefits, like better muscle endurance and strength, plus flexibility.
While it may be a low impact sport, once people’s strokes, speed, and endurance improve over time, it can be a great source of exercise.
If you’re swimming at your local pool, whether at the YMCA or college pool, you’ll probably see a range of swimmers in age and skill. For example, there are very good swimmers who either swam in high school, did club, or swam in college. They usually are swimming fast and can go forever. Plus they probably have equipment with them, such as a kickboard, buoy, fins or hand paddles to work on certain techniques during their sets.
Being a lifeguard for a couple years, I have seen swimmers of all ages come and go. Even when I used to go swim at a local community college, the amount of older people I saw just logging laps or doing water aerobics surprised me. I specifically remember this one particular lady I used to talk to at the pool. She would tell me that she only goes to the pool because it brings a lot of stress off one of her knees on which she had surgery.
From then, I sort of realized that the sport isn’t just to be like Phelps or Ledecky. It can be used to get your body moving or as aquatic therapy. For her, the pool was the only chance where she could have full control of her knee and give more mobility for it. As for older people, according to American Senior Communities, swimming can have a tremendous amount of benefit. Some benefits listed are that it improves heart health, is easier on the bones and joints, increases flexibility, and increases muscle strength and tone.
For younger kids, they are usually in swim lessons or even in their early years of club swimming. Swimming to them is something that’s really fun because they get to just be in the water splashing, kicking, and blowing bubbles. Even though their main focus isn’t getting down the strokes right away, they are still in the phase of getting used to the water. So they can then further refine freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly. Without knowing the basics, swimming can be a great benefit for them. Since they’re so young, they can probably get a hold of the skill very quickly since they are still growing.
Overall, no matter how old you are, swimming can give you great benefits that running or weightlifting might be unable. It definitely works out your body almost immediately when you get in the water. Depending on your stamina and skill, just swimming a 25 can get you huffing and puffing right away.