The Health Benefits of Swimming
Whenever people try to get in shape, the first thing that most of them do is join a gym. While the gym is a great place to a get a good workout, you do not necessary need it to get in shape. To get a good workout all you have to do is pay a visit to the pool in your back yard.
 |
| Swim Workout |
Swimming is a great way to challenge yourself and shape up your body. It provides a great cardiovascular workout and helps shape and tone muscles, all while building strength and endurance. Besides that, swimming is also a great way to relax and cool off during the hot summer days.
A good swimming workout will require you to swim anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. You can burn approximately 650 calories by swimming for an hour. Also try to swim at least 3 days a week if not more and make sure you follow consistent routine in order to achieve the results that you seek.
In the beginning you should swim for about 20 minutes and work on building your endurance. Then as you get more used to your routine keep increasing your swim times until you can go for an hour. Also it is a good idea to vary your swimming techniques to stress different parts of your body and get the complete body workout.
There are many different swimming routines that you can choose from and each will provide you with good results. However if you don’t know where to begin, then you can follow my sample swim session to get you started on the right path: Warm up for 5 minutes by doing light strokes and treading of water. Perform 4, 50 meter laps of freestyle strokes. Rest or tread water for 1 minute. Perform 4, 50 meter laps of breaststrokes. Rest or tread water for 1 minutePerform 4, 50 meter laps of backstrokes. Rest or tread water for 1 minute.Cool down for 5 minutes by doing some more light strokes and treading of water.
Now as you start getting stronger and build more endurance, increase the number of laps and perform more different strokes, such as the butterfly stroke, front crawl, etc. You goal is to keep pushing your body. Doing so will continually get you in better cardiovascular shape and keep building and toning your muscles. Also make sure you are breathing properly while swimming as this will help you swim for longer periods of time.
When you get more advanced, you can look to do endurance swims to change things up. This is where you swim for 20 to 30 minutes straight and is a great way to get stronger, build stamina, and alternate with your regular swimming routines. When in comes to your swimming workouts, make sure you are consistent and swim for at least 20 minutes each session. However, the most important thing to remember is to have fun while swimming. When you are having fun, it won’t even feel like work which will make you want to swim for longer periods of time.
