Swimming Benefits Your Body, Mind and Spirit

Swimming has several benefits for the physical, mental and social health. It's good to understand the benefits of swimming as it can really change your life. In fact, it can extend your longevity as found by researchers.

Below are some of the benefits you can get from swimming:

Low impact — When you exercise on land, such as running or walking, you put a lot of pressure on your joints, bones and muscles. With swimming, the buoyancy of water acts cushions your body and there is no harsh pounding to stress your joints and muscles. In fact, swimming is regarded as one of the safest exercises, with very little risk of injury. And many people who have been injured turn to swimming as a way to exercise, and even rehabilitate their injuries!

Anyone can do it — No matter your age, weight, skill level, or fitness level, swimming is an excellent choice for anyone including overweight people, people with disabilities , pregnant women and seniors.

Longevity — A recent study shows that swimming helps you live longer. In a study of more than 40,000 men ages 20 to 90, swimmers were 50 percent less likely to die during the 32 year study period than were walkers or runners.

Weight loss — You burn around three calories a mile per pound of bodyweight. So if you weigh 150 pounds and you swim one mile in 30 minutes, then you will burn 900 calories per hour. Of course, how many calories you burn depends on how much you weigh and the intensity of your workout. If you weigh 150 pounds and swim at moderate intensity, you will burn around 600 calories per hour.

Cross- training — Swimming is also a great way to do cross-training, when added to your regular workouts. Before a land workout, swimming helps you warm up. After a land workout, swimming helps you cool down, recover your muscles and relax.


Physical health benefits — Swimming builds flexibility, endurance, muscle strength and cardiovascular health. Water adds 12 times more resistance than air, so it takes more work to move through water than air. Swimming not only helps strengthen muscles, it also helps builds lean, flexible muscles.

Mental benefits — For many swimmers, swimming is like a form of mediation. This is because swimming is a focused activity that cannot be combined with distractions like reading or watching television. Swimming forces you to regulate your breathing, and allows you to focus on nothing but the rhythm of your stroke. It reduces stress and leaves you feel relaxed and refreshed.

Recreation — Swimming is a lot of fun and can be a great way to socialize. Whether at the beach or a pool, it is fun to swim with other people. You can join a water aerobics class or a master’s swim practice, and socialize while you workout.

Another article that proves that swimming benefits your health and may even extend your life:

Studies Show that Swimming Benefits Your Health and May Even Extend Your Life

Most people know that activity in water can be used to treat and even heal a long list of physical ailments. Physicians have also long touted the benefits of swimming for just about everyone.

New studies continue to show the physical and mental benefits of swimming or other aquatic activity.

One new study shows that swimming cuts men’s risk of dying by about 50% compared to runners, walkers and sedentary peers. The University of South Carolina study led by Dr. Steven Blair evaluated more than 40,000 men over a 32 year period.“Swimmers had the lowest death rate,” explains Blair. “Therefore, swimming appears to be a healthy alternative to other types of physical activity.” Dr. Blair also found that regular swimmers had a higher cardio respiratory fitness than walkers and sedentary people.

Dr. Joel M. Stager, a researcher at the University of Indiana, has spent the past several years conducting studies on the relationship between swimming and aging. What he has found is nothing short of amazing.

“When you look at all the standard physiological markers associated with the aging process, we see that every one of them is slowed dramatically in people who swim regularly”, says Dr. Stager. “Exercising in water slows down the aging process, and often quite dramatically – by upwards of 20 percent in some cases. You almost cannot overstate the benefits of exercising in water.”

In fact Dr. Stager’s research points to a range of swimming benefits across the full spectrum of health. Research has shown that swimming slows down the aging process in terms of respiration, muscle mass, bone density, cardiovascular activity and neurological function.

Swimmers are seldom if ever injured. The vast majority of people studied have never experienced any kind of swimming related injury. And there are thousands of case histories and testimonials of people who’ve recovered from serious physical problems by working out in water. Ankle, hip and knee injuries, spinal injuries, neurological disorders, arthritis, all manner of sports injuries and most types of congenital disabilities can all be treated with some form of water exercise.

There is also evidence to suggest that swimming benefits mental health and even spiritual and social health.

“When you look at the benefits from the perspective of routine swimmers, it’s fair to say that it’s as close to a genuine fountain of youth as exists in the real world”, says Dr. Stager.

You may visit the original article here.

Cheers!

-Jam-

How Michael Phelps Managed To Break So Many Swimming World Records, One After Another?

In today’s Swimavenue, we are going to share with you an article on the swimming prodigy Michael Phelps, who will be celebrating his 26th birthday this month on the 30 June.



Phelps has won a total of 16 Olympic medals – 6 Gold and 2 Bronze at Athens 2004; 8 Gold at Beijing 2008. This is a record which no one has ever attained. At only 26, he will most likely have his chance of entering more competitions in the coming years and ensuring that his records will be intact and unbroken.

We would like to share on 2 main topics about him:
1. What Michael eats.
2. Michael’s gym workout

Phelps’ Diet

Phelps actually does not have a strict diet per se. He eats what he wants to eat, and whenever he wants to eat. For typical day, this is usually what is on his menu:
• Breakfast: 3 fried egg sandwiches; cheese; tomatoes; lettuce; fried onions; mayonnaise; three chocolate-chip pancakes; 5-egg omelette; 3 sugar-coated slices of French toast; bowl of grits; 2 cups of coffee
• Lunch: Half-kilogram (1 pound) of enriched pasta; 2 large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise on white bread; energy drinks
• Dinner: Half-kilogram of pasta, with carbonara sauce; large pizza; energy drinks

At first glance, it may seem like an unhealthy menu to most. This all combines to a total of 10,000 to 12,000 calories a day, in which a typical guy only needs 2,000 to 2,500 calories. However, we have neglected the fact that he is a swimming champion who trains for 5 hours daily.




His coach, Bob Bowman in fact does not restrict Phelps to what he eats. If we look at his menu again:
• He eats white bread instead of whole wheat bread.
• He eats only 3 big meals instead of spreading them to more meals with smaller portion.
• He eats not so much fruits and vegetables. Instead, he eats damn lot of carbohydrates – pasta and bread.

Phelps had told reporters that he needs those calories in his body to swim. Due to his muscle intensive physique (about 8 per cent of body fats) and long hours of training, he has high metabolism. If an ordinary office guy eats 10,000 calories a day, he will probably gain 2 pounds of fats daily. However, Michael Phelps is no ordinary man. Unlike several celebrities who have to watch out for strict workout regime, Phelps just eats what he likes and still able to maintain a toned body shape which many yearns for. This is probably the difference between a world class athlete and those action heroes we seen in cinemas.



Phelps’ Gym Workout
If you have watched the underwater scene showing how Michael Phelps swim, you will notice that his strokes are clearly different from the other swimmers. Not only his strokes are necessarily fast, they are also long and smooth. Instead of going for short-stroke speed, he goes for stronger and longer strokes that propel him forward.

Few years earlier, Michael’s coach, Bob Bowman has hired a personal trainer to design a gym weight lifting workout program for him. However, they found out that program focused more on building bulky type of body, it has turned out to become counter-productive. What swimmer like Michael needs is buoyancy in water and not bulky body with huge muscle mass. They then sacked that trainer and got a new trainer which gave a more swimmer-friendly workout.

In order to slice through water with those deadly powerful strokes, one must be strong in multiple planes of motion. True enough, according to what his coach has disclosed, Michael Phelps does “diagonal wood chopper” and “straight wood chopper”.



Here are general guidelines how you can do diagonal woodchopper:
1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Hold a medicine ball with both hands.
2. Lift the medicine ball over your right shoulder.
3. Then, chop down across your body by moving the medicine ball towards the ground outside of your left foot.
4. Return to the starting position.
5. Do 3 sets with 10 repetitions for each side.


Note: Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any lying straight woodchopper video on youtube. However, this is the closest we could get for you.

How you can do “straight woodchoper”
1. Lie on your back on the floor. Bend your knees, but your feet remains flat on the floor.
2. Hold the medicine ball directly above your head.
3. Contract your abdominal muscles and lower the ball behind your head as far as you can without lifting your back or bending your arms. The motion is like chopping the air, but in one single straight plane.
4. Do 3 sets of 10 repetitions.



Phelps does other typical strength trainings, 3 times a week with 1 hour each session, but those trainings focus in building his muscle endurance and flexibility in addition to improving his stroke power. With such a powerful and long stroke, when others have to take 12 strokes, he probably cover the same distance with only 8 strokes.



As for cardiovascular exercise, Micheal Phelps relies on stationary bike because running is too much hazard for his knees. Believe it or not, Phelps claimed that he had often tripped and fell when he run. Rumors said that his flexibility in his knees and ankles, though enhanced his performance in pool, has resulted in some loss of stability on land.

For more information, you may visit the main article site here which consists of the full article.

Cheers!
-Jam-