6 Reasons Swimming is Beneficial for Your Health and Well-Being

By Martin Williams

Swimming is not just a summer sport; it has been called the perfect exercise. It can be done by the people of almost all ages and needs no fancy equipment – just you and the deep blue. The advantages of swimming to overall health go much deeper than the obvious benefits. Let’s take a deep breath and dive into some amazing benefits of swimming.

1. Improved Flexibility:

Unlike exercise machines that tend to work on one body part at a time, swimming involves a whole range of body motion that allows most of the muscles in the body to work. This helps ligaments and joints to stay flexible. Your hip muscles are engaged as the legs scissor through the water, the arms move in wide arcs, and the head and spine turn from side to side. Plus, every stroke lengthens your body to reach forward that helps to give your body a good stretch from head to toe. Does swimming help you grow? Learn more about how swimming can increase your height at Height Gainers.

2. Full Body Workout/Toning Up:

Swimming is not only a brilliant exercise to lose weight, but it is also a great way to have a full-body workout. Regular swimming tones your body as you work all of your muscles. It improves your endurance as it’s a mixture of cardio and aerobic workout. It increases your muscle tone and muscle strength. An hour of swimming burns as many calories as running without impacting your bones and joints.

3. Reduces Inflammation:

While swimming has the cardiovascular benefits of strengthening heart muscles, research also indicated that aerobic exercises such as swimming, reduce inflammation that causes fats or cholesterol to build-up in your arteries. Reduction of system-wide inflammation leads to the lessened progression of disease in other areas of the body. So you can expect to hear more benefits of swimming as the research progresses.  

4. Stress Relief and Better Mental Health:

Swimming can also give you a natural endorphin kick that boosts your mood. It is also calming and meditative and lets you experience a relaxation rush. Swimming helps to lower your anxiety, stress, and depression naturally and helps you focus on something new or different. So if you feel that you are emotionally drowning, jumping in the pool of water can actually help you overcome stress and drown out all the distraction, contributing to better mental health.

5. Salt-Water Swimming can be a Beauty Treatment:

Open water swimming in the ocean brings noticeable improvements to your skin over time. Swimming in saltwater detoxifies your skin to promote the growth of new cells and helps retain the skin moisture. An invigorating ocean swim makes your skin feel smooth and healthy. 

6. Weight Control:

Swimming is great for burning calories and keeping your weight under control. The exact number of calories you can burn through swimming depends on your physiology, types of strokes, and intensity, but generally, 30 minutes of breaststroke can burn almost 367 calories. Ten minutes of backstroke torches 80 calories, freestyle burns 100 calories, and butterfly stroke lights up 150. Therefore, swimming can prove to be the best exercise when you want to burn those extra calories. This sport can significantly improve the quality of your life. Furthermore, you don’t have to worry about the sweat as the water will constantly cool down your body.