Are you tired of pounding the pavement – and dealing with the notorious injuries that are synonymous with running?
Don’t fit in at a CrossFit gym?
Does yoga scare you?
Just turn to your backyard pool as your go-to exercise! It’s a great way to improve your physical fitness and offers a ton of benefits.
Swimming helps you maintain your weight, improve blood flow and heart rate, boosts muscle tone, drives breath control, and much more!
Here’s a deeper dive into the benefits of choosing swimming as exercise.
It’s kind on your body
You can suffer a lot of injuries – especially as you get older – engaging in exercises like running and lifting weights. If you’re overweight, these types of exercises become even more challenging.
But swimming is easy on your body. It doesn’t stress your bones, joints or the skeletal system. Because you aren’t coming into contact with hard surfaces, swimming won’t cause the same injuries as running or even walking.
You can get better results
Since swimming won’t strain your body or cause you pain, you’ll be able to work out longer and more frequently. And get better results from the exercise – whether that means losing weight, maintaining your weight or gaining muscles and fitness.
It’s toning
You WILL build muscle swimming, that’s because water is much more dense than air. So when you’re moving your arms and legs against the pressure of the water, you’ll tone your muscles while working out aerobically, too. It’s like a gentler form of working out with weights!
It improves flexibility
If you like that kind of thing, you can get a great workout in the gym, targeting isolated parts of the body. However, when you swim, you’ll use most of your muscles all at once! In addition, you will also boost your body’s flexibility.
Think about it: When you move your arm through the water, where else will you mirror that motion? You’re extending your arm’s movement, targeting muscles that most basic exercises miss. When you scissor your legs, you’re using much more muscle than you would in, say, a squat.
With every stroke you make, you’re stretching out your muscles and elongating everything. Essentially, you’re killing two birds with one stone: Gaining muscle and improving flexibility.
It extends your breath capacity
There are few exercises that focus on improving your breathing, but swimming is one of them! It forces you to focus on the breath and doing it properly, which in turn, increases your lung capacity.
After a few weeks of regular swimming, you’ll notice an improvement in all kinds of indirect ways. For example, as you breathe deeper, the blood in your body will circulate through all of its systems.
Start today!
If you already have a pool in your backyard, take advantage of it! Hop in early in the morning before the day gets started, and put in a few laps. Or take a dip after work, when it cools down in the evening, and get your swim on. Before you know it, you’ll see results in your muscle tone, flexibility, breathing and more!
If you don’t own a pool, now’s the time to consider it. Talk to the experts at Family Pools and Spas about your options.
Do you swim as exercise? What’s your go-to exercise activity?
