Tom Holland, author of “Swim, Bike, Run, Eat: The Complete Guide to Fueling Your Triathlon”. Once joked that “Swimming is not a sport. It’s a means to keep from drowning.” but admittedly appreciates swimming as he got older. If running is the highest of the high-impact cardiovascular activities, swimming is the lowest of the low-impact ones.
But if you’ve ever been sidelined from running because of an impact-related injury you’ve had to face the dilemma of finding alternatives to staying fit without running, most will turn to cycling another low impact sport only if it doesn’t aggravate your injury or if the weather is in your favor. Runners will turn to every other exercise before considering swimming, but that would be a big mistake.
Swimming has big benefits:
- It’s low impact
- Swimming is low-impact, which means you can do it into your 100s (literally)!
- It’s a full body workout
- From head to toe, swimming engages your entire body. Each competitive stroke engages different muscle groups so you’ll torch calories! Fun Fact: swimming butterfly is the most taxing movement among all sports. According to Nutristrategy.com, the calorie torching ranges from 649 calories for a 130-pound person to 1,024 calories for a 205-pound person.
- Improves body awareness
- Swimming improves flexibility, range of motion, and functional strength in the water. This leads to improved core strength and mobile stability in all your joints, as well as stronger muscles and enhanced motor skills.
- You don’t get to sweat, or at least don’t feel like it.
- You do sweat when you swim, but because your body heat is conducted by colder pool water, you don’t sweat nearly as much as you would if you were exercising out of water.
- The swimmer body
- There are a ton of health benefits swimming has to offer, but probably none that serves our vanity quite as much as having a swimmer’s body.
Train with Eytan in Hendon/North west London/NW4
