Swimming For Fun and Fitness

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | (0) Comments

Well, I don’t know about fun so much, but it is definitely good for fitness. Swimming was my main sport in High School and there is no doubt that I was in incredible shape back then. Great cardio, core strength and flexibility. It also takes a bit of coordination to swim properly so that is an added bonus. So find a local pool (YMCA, aquatics club, etc) and schedule an hour to swim. If you travel a lot, many of the better hotels now have indoor pools which are usually deserted most of the time. But even if you just go to the pool and do water aerobics like my elderly mom, you will get some benefit from it. Here is some more from Men’s Health via MSN-

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A swimming pool—the kind with lanes, not a swim-up bar—triggers a negative twinge in many men. Too cold, too inconvenient, too… wet. And that’s too bad. Swimming gives you a great cardiovascular workout with none of the joint-jarring of running. You’ll burn roughly the same number of calories per minute as you would biking, without the traffic risks. You’ll get a restorative workout that helps you come back strong in your other sports. And you’ll develop that lean-and-powerful look that draws so many women to the TV when the Olympics are on.

Swimming builds functional strength, starting with your core muscles—back, chest, abdominals. “People think it’s about making your arms and legs strong, but those are simply extensions of what the core does when you swim properly,” says Terry Laughlin, a veteran swimming coach and author of Triathlon Swimming Made Easy. Problem is, many men can’t swim properly—they thrash, struggle, sink, and give up. Not you. Your swimming lesson, adult version, begins here.