Are you looking for a good aerobic exercise, but find running to be a bit boring? Maybe you’d also like to work your muscles, but you’re worried about straining them? Enter swimming. Swimming is one of the best exercises you can do for your body.
What’s so great about it? Read on to learn about the top 5 amazing benefits of swimming.
1. Improved Muscle Strength
If you love the feeling of getting stronger through your workouts but are a little sick of lifting weight after weight, then swimming is the perfect exercise for you.
When you swim, you work muscles all over your body. Legs are kicking, arms are pulling, and backs are rotating, and stomachs are tightening.
This is especially good news for those who suffer from any sort of chronic pain, such as back or neck pain.Swimming can help build muscles in these areas, without the worry of straining them.
If you combine the muscle building activity of swimming with a muscle relaxing activity like a spinal decompression, then you may find your back and neck pain going away entirely.
2. It’s a Calorie Scorcher
If you’re looking for a new exercise that scorches calories and burns fat, then swimming is the workout for you.
That’s right move over running, because swimming is also a great way to burn calories. In fact, depending on the stroke you choose and the intensity you perform it at, swimming can even burn more calories than running.
By swimming 10 minutes, you can burn about 60 calories doing the breaststroke, 80 calories doing the backstroke, 100 calories doing the freestyle, and a whopping 150 calories doing the butterfly. And remember, that’s just for ten minutes. To put it into perspective for you, running for 10 minutes burns about 100 calories.
3. Reduce Stress and Depression
Swimming just doesn’t have physical benefits, it has mental benefits as well. The same high you can get from running you can get from swimming. And, because you are constantly stretching out your body when swimming, you can also get the same relaxed feeling you get from doing a session of yoga.
Plus, when you’re swimming, you get to tune everything out. All you can hear is the sound of water and your own breathing, making it an extremely meditative activity.
Lastly, recent research has shown that swimming can actually help reverse brain damage that’s been caused by stress. So, if you’re feeling the blues, jumping into a body of water and swimming some laps may be just the medicine you need.
4. Swimming Can Help Make You Smarter
This probably isn’t a benefit that you were expecting, but recent research has shown that swimming can actually make you smarter.
One study looked at two groups of children, one who took swimming lessons regularly and one who were non-swimmers. Researchers found that those who took swimming lessons were able to master language learning, physical development, fine motor skills, and confidence development far faster than the control group.
5. It’s Good for Your Skin
That’s right. If you choose to swim in saltwater, you are not only building your muscles, brain, and body, you are also improving your skin.
This is because saltwater works to detoxify the skin while at the same time helping it retain moisture and promote cell growth. Next time you go for a swim in the ocean, you will notice how smooth and clean your skin feels after.
As you can see, there are many unique, wonderful benefits of swimming. Comment below if you have any questions.
