6 Reasons You Should Add Swimming to Your Workout Routine

Swimming is an excellent exercise that targets your entire body as well as your cardiovascular system. It is the fourth most popular workout in the United States as it offers an array of health benefits. In fact, an hour of freestyle swimming burns as many calories as running, that too without impacting your joints and bones. It is an enjoyable workout that helps reduce your body fat, improves your physical and mental health, lowers blood pressure, and more.

Here are a few reasons to add swimming to your workout routine:

Swimming is a low-impact and highly effective workout, offering a bunch of amazing health advantages.

1.) Swimming is a full-body workout:

One of the biggest advantages of swimming is that it works on your entire body. With swimming, you don’t need to perform targeted exercises to hit different muscle groups. Instead, swimming is one such exercise that can strengthen and tone your body from head to toe.

Not only does it strengthen your muscles, but it also develops muscle endurance so you can workout more efficiently. It enhances your heart rate but does not stress your body. Swimming also increases endorphin levels and reduces stress and anxiety by developing hormones that are responsible for making you happy.

There are different strokes that you can perform to add transitions to your freestyle swimming workout. Some of the most popular swimming strokes are:

• Backstroke
• Breaststroke
• Sidestroke
• Butterfly
• Underwater, etc.

Each of these strokes targets different muscle groups and allows you to use most of your muscles to move your body easily through the water.

2.) It helps to build endurance:

Since swimming is a repetitive exercise, it helps to build muscle endurance. Once you learn the correct form of swimming, you can then increase your lapse as well as intensity to build more endurance. One of the major ways that swimming improves fitness levels is by enhancing your cardiovascular functioning endurance, thereby allowing you to work out for longer periods of time.

3.) Suitable for people with arthritis and injuries:

Swimming is a safe and appropriate exercise for people with injuries, arthritis, disability and other problems that make high-intensity exercises challenging. Swimming may reduce pain and help in recovery from injuries. Various studies have shown that low-impact activities, such as swimming, have reduced joint pain, stiffness, and physical limitations in people with osteoarthritis.

4.) It helps to enhance lung capacity:

Swimming requires practice and more importantly, proper breathing techniques. It not only helps you to hold your breath while underwater but also enhances your lung efficiency and capacity. Proper lung capacity is very important in daily life as it enables your body to absorb more oxygen and contributes to better physical health.

5.) It is good for the cardiovascular system:

Swimming is basically a low-intensity aerobic exercise that helps improve the functioning of your cardiovascular system. It increases your heart rate and allows your body to pass oxygen to your muscles, thereby burning more calories and lowering cholesterol levels. It is very important to elevate your heart rate during workouts, and swimming is an ideal way to do so. As you swim, your heart rate increases and pumps more blood. And over time, this leads to a lower risk of heart disease.

6.) It strengthens your muscles:

Swimming is a full-body exercise that targets all the major muscles in your upper and lower body. With every stroke, your muscles get engaged and strengthen over time. When you are performing specific strokes, such as freestyle or butterfly, you are using your upper body muscles, including your shoulders, chest, arms, and back. However, when you include techniques that involve kicking, you are achieving the benefits of a lower-body workout and targeting your glutes and leg muscles.

Takeaway:

If you are looking to include a low-intensity but effective form of exercise, then look no further than swimming. It is an ideal exercise that is suitable for all age groups, and for people looking for an easy and low-impact exercise. You can include it in your primary fitness routine or as a part of your cross-training program. Once you learn the basics, you may try laps for at least 30 minutes at a pace that is comfortable and keeps your heart rate increased. Take rest as necessary, and enjoy.