- Swimming is a good exercise. Swimming involves the use of almost all the muscles required for movement, without the weight of your body pounding you with each move like when you are walking or running.
- Water resistance is greater than air resistance, so that the muscles have to work harder.
- Regular swimming will build your muscle strength, endurance, and cardio-vascular fitness. The longer you swim, the more your endurance and speed will improve.
- Without overworking the heart, swimming improves the body’s use of oxygen and increases lung function.
- Swimming stimulates circulation.
- Swimming promotes proper breathing.
- Swimming helps to combat the aging process.
- Swimming burns calories at about 3 calories a mile per pound of bodyweight and improves one’s ability to control and maintain a healthy weight.
- Swimming is fantastic for toning the upper arms, shoulders and legs. The best strokes for whole body toning are the freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke.
- When you swim, cool water lower your body temperature, so that you don’t get hot and sticky as when you do other forms of exercise or sports.
- Swimming is more than a fun sport and a way to stay healthy.
- Develops a positive mental attitude and high self-esteem.
- Promotes fitness and teaches to strive for physical achievement. Many professional athletes in various sports started out as swimmers and gained strength and coordination that helped them to excel.
- Heightened sense of well-being.
- Increases energy level.
- Reduces stress.
- Soothes the mind and body.
On the breast
- Front crawl
- Breaststroke
- Heads-Up Breaststroke
- Butterfly
- Slow butterfly
- Dog paddle
- Human stroke
- Survival travel stroke
- Breast feet first strokes
- Snorkeling
- Finswimming
- An arm and a leg
On the back
- Backstroke
- Elementary backstroke
- Inverted breaststroke
- Inverted butterfly
- Back double trudgen
- Flutter back finning
- Feet first swimming
On the side
- Side stroke
- Overarm sidestroke
In side stroke, swimmer lies on one side. Instead of working both arms and legs simultaneously in the same way, side stroke uses them simultaneously but differently. When tired of exercising one side, a swimmer can just turn over and use the other side, and the change of side can help the limbs to recover.
Side stroke is useful as a lifesaving method and often used for long-distance swimming.
- Swimming is a skill that could save your life or help you save someone else’s life in an emergency.
