Article Surfing Archive

Swimming is a very attractive form of exercise. While all forms of exercise have strengths and weaknesses, swimming is a good aerobic, low impact exercise. Swimming generally has longer sessions than other forms of exercise, and requires constant muscle action. This makes swimming an excellent way to improve wind capacity and endurance. Swimming involves the entire body, and thus uses a great deal of muscle as a percentage of the body's total supply. This also increases the efficiency of the exercise both as a means to burn calories and as an additional reason for the wind to benefit from this form of exercise.

The water helps support the body, as most people float naturally. This reduces the stress on hips and knees, and makes swimming especially attractive for elderly people, some who need rehabilitation after injuries, and in warm water, those with arthritis. Swimming is also a very good place to start for overweight people who desire to improve their physical conditioning. Another group often told to use swimming based exercise is pregnant women.

Swimming does not provide assistance for those elderly people trying to combat osteoporosis. Swimming provides less aid in reducing weight by burning more calories than the length of exercise would suggest, and swimming provides more of a workout for the upper body than the legs. It is possible to provide a limited anaerobic workout in sprint work, though this mainly works the arms. In fact, excessive leg muscles are considered a disadvantage in competitive swimming as they consume oxygen the rest of the body could otherwise use.

In addition to actually swimming, there are a wide variety of possible water based exercises. This include resistance swimming in which a person is held in place while swimming, a variety of exercises to perform while floating or treading water or even the same sorts of exercises one can perform on land in shallow water.

Swimming is a pleasant form of exercise, making it more likely that a person will actually stick to the exercise program. Swimming, being aerobic, isn't an effective means of producing muscle bulk, but is a wonderful way to tone a body and combat stress.