Swimming is not only fun, it is also excellent for health. And that goes much further than just improving your fitness with lifeguard training near me.
Benefit 1: Swimming boosts health and mood
Swimming is relaxing. This is because the water makes you feel lighter and calms the heart. Relaxing swimming reduces stress and depression.
Swimming is also a cardiovascular workout and such workouts improve mood and boost confidence. This is because you produce more of the hormone serotonin while swimming.
The effort of swimming gives you more energy than it takes. Right after exercise you have more energy available than a few hours before, when you came home tired from work.
All the above things ensure that swimming gives a boost to your physical and mental health.
Swimming Boosts Health
Benefit 2: Swimming improves your sleep pattern
Your general health also depends on your sleep. Because during the night your mind and body recover and rejuvenate.
Good sleep is therefore important and a good exercise helps you with that. Because during (heavy) exercise, hormones are released that give you a better night’s sleep afterwards.
Benefit 3: Swimming keeps blood pressure low
Since the water in a swimming pool exerts more pressure than air outside the water, the water makes it easier for blood to flow back to your heart. This means that your heart has to work 10 to 15% less hard!
Benefit 4: Burn 500 calories per hour
Swimming (not bobbing ;-)) burns about the same amount of calories as running at 10 km/h. You can easily burn 300 kcal in half an hour of swimming.
Benefit 5: Reduces the impact on the joints
Swimming is a low-impact sport. By this we mean that swimming is good for your muscles, tendons and joints.
In the water you weigh 90% less and you save your body much more! That is also the reason why injured athletes often start working on their fitness again in the pool.
Benefit 6: Strengthens the muscles
In addition to a fat-burning fitness training, swimming is also a resistance or strength training. You get that resistance from the water itself. Because water works against you harder than air. Swimming also builds muscle mass.
If you also alternate the different strokes, you train the muscles in different ways. Swimming helps you to develop a balanced body and is the ideal full-body workout.
Benefit 7: Reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease
Swimming, like other forms of cardiovascular exercise, lowers your blood pressure and cholesterol level and thus reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. To do this, you need to swim for 30 minutes at least three times a week or otherwise get your heart rate up in the air.
Benefit 8: Strengthens the capacity of the lungs
Asthmatics are often advised to swim, best of all in an indoor pool. The warm and humid climate is better for the airways than the drier outside air and indoors the amount of pollen in the air is also limited, which suffers so much from hay fever and asthma patients.
But also in general swimming offers asthma patients benefits. Swimming increases lung capacity and improves breathing, which are particularly beneficial to asthmatics.
If you exercise regularly, you have a greater lung capacity. This is not just reserved for swimmers, but it applies to all sports. For example, if you go swimming once a week, you will soon notice that you will be less breathless when you walk up a flight of stairs, for example.
Benefit 9: Strengthens the bones
Weight-bearing sports such as running are known to increase your bone density. Because your body has to carry more weight with these exercises, your boner becomes stronger.
For a long time it was thought that swimming as a low-impact sport was not accompanied by this benefit. However, recent research shows that while swimmers have a lower bone density than runners and strength athletes, they still have a higher density than non-athletes. Swimming increases your bone density.