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Swimming is widely recognized by health and fitness professionals as a nearly perfect
activity to improve aerobic fitness, flexibility, body strength, muscle tone, and coordination.
Wear and tear on the body is an almost universal problem with any activity more strenuous than
channel surfing. Swimming has the distinction of being the sport lowest in wear and tear.
Challenging to the mind and body, uplifting to the spirit and flesh, swimming is a fascinating
sport that can grab you, hold you, and keep you healthy for the rest of your life. “There are
two things in existence that nobody thinks are bad for you—swimming and yogurt,” said Leonard
Goodman in The Wall Street Journal.
Aerobic Conditioning
If you canvas fitness swimmers, you will find that a common goal is to improve aerobic fitness.
Exercise intended to improve aerobic fitness affects two related systems, the cardiovascular
system and the muscular system, which have different conditioning components.
- Cardiovascular conditioning: Any exercise that raises your heart rate higher than 120 beats
per minute for longer than 20 minutes improves the condition of the cardiovascular system. The
cardiovascular system is the well-known system of heart, lungs, and blood vessels that gets oxygen
from the air you breathe into your lungs and transports it to the individual muscle cells where it
will be used.
Oxygen enters the lungs, with all the other crud you breathe in, and diffuses through the walls of
huge numbers of capillaries and into your red blood cells. Through a maze of different-sized blood
vessels, the heart pumps these red blood cells to the capillaries surrounding muscle cells and
fibers, still carrying their precious cargo of oxygen. Here, the transition from the cardiovascular
system to the muscular system takes place.
- Muscular system aerobic conditioning: Once the cardiovascular system delivers the red
blood cells to a muscle cell that requires more oxygen, the oxygen diffuses across the muscle cell
membrane and into the cell, where it helps produce energy for muscle contractions. The term aerobic
metabolism identifies a complex set of chemical interactions that take fats, carbohydrates, and
oxygen and produce energy for exercise. Aerobic conditioning causes a variety of adaptations within
the muscle cell that improve the cell’s ability to perform work for extended periods.
Swimming properly involves a greater percentage of your body’s muscle mass in aerobic
exercise than any other popular activity. Cross-country skiing is the only other sport vying for
this position.
Aerobic conditioning of any specific muscle occurs only when the exercise you are doing causes
that muscle to contract repeatedly and consistently throughout your workout. No wonder the runners
or cyclists who take up swimming find that, despite excellent cardiovascular conditioning level,
swimming a few laps leaves them fatigued. They have spent time aerobically conditioning the lower
extremities but have done little or no conditioning of the torso and upper extremities.
Muscular Strength
Although swimming does not build huge, rippling muscles, even moderate-intensity distance swimming
is excellent for improving strength and tone in several muscles, especially torso, shoulder, and arm
muscles. More experienced swimmers use high-intensity interval and sprint training to gain large
increases in overall body strength. One of swimming’s advantages is developing functional strength
through the large ranges of motion swimmers use in the sport.
Flexibility
Inherent flexibility improvement may be one of the greatest benefits of swimming. It certainly is
one of the largest factors allowing people to participate fully in the sport, well past ages when
they must drop other sports. Because of the large ranges of motion swimmers use and the positions
we ask the body to move through when executing proper strokes, virtually all people who swim
regularly become more flexible and supple. In addition, proper stroke technique builds on a series
of plyometic contractions—motions that stretch a muscle just before applying the contractile force.
This is similar to winding up before throwing a ball to stretch all the throwing muscles before they
contract. Plyometric contractions increase flexibility and strength over time.
Body Composition
Much has been said over the years about whether swimming is a good way to get leaner. Like any form
of exercise, the intensity with which you approach the sport has a lot to do with the results you get.
One has only to look at the sleek, well-proportioned, long-muscled bodies of swimmers mounting the
blocks at any swimming competition to know that swimming can produce a body you would be proud to
wear almost nothing on.
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