Swimming is an activity that has been in existence since time immemorial. People swim for leisure as much as they do for a profession. If you’ve been considering taking up swimming and wondering how beneficial of an activity it is, this article will help you out. Like with many other sports, swimming has tons of benefits. There are health, psychological and social benefits to swimming. We have highlighted some below.

Health Benefits

Cardiorespiratory fitness

Swimming is a great exercise for your heart and lungs as it improves the functioning of both organs. Swimming helps to strengthen the heart by allowing easy blood flow. It is not so strenuous an activity that’ll strain these organs, yet it gives them the workout they need. This is why swimming is one exercise that people with heart conditions are advised to engage in.

Builds body mass

Swimming is a type of resistance training as it involves moving against the current of water. Because the body parts used to move are constantly getting used, gain in body mass is usually noticed.

Burns calories

Swimming for an hour can burn around 500-600 calories on average, depending on the intensity of your strokes. Swimming can thus be used as an exercise of choice by overweight people to lose weight as water offers a buoyancy there isn’t on land, and they get extra cushioning for their joints.

Low impact

Swimming is a low-impact sport, and this means your joints and bones feel less strain due to the buoyancy of the water, which is why doctors strongly recommend it for people living with arthritis and other joint problems.

Psychological benefits

Being active via swimming has been shown to positively affect people’s mental health. Some of the psychological benefits of swimming come from nature’s calming effect on people. Some of these benefits include:

• Increases self-esteem
• Lowers the risk of depression
• Improves mood
• Slows cognitive decline and dementia
• Reduces stress
• Improves sleep

Social benefits

Swimming is a social sport, except in cases where you’re using a personal pool to swim and train, you have people to interact with at the pool, unlike in traditional gyms where everyone can be plugged into their headphones, effectively tuning the next person out. For this reason, researchers sought to find if swimming has any benefits on social life, and this is a summation of their findings.

• It helps you learn goal setting
• Enhances teamwork
• Enhances cognitive functions
• Increases body positivity
• Eases the development of social skills

Others

• It helps in detoxifying the skin
• You can swim at any age
• Improves flexibility
• Easy accessibility of pools
• Improves balance and coordination
• A fitness alternative for injured athletes
• Kids who swim become smarter adults

On a final note, while swimming as a sport and leisure cannot be a cure for all ailments and conditions, the proven benefits give us enough reason to dive into the water the next chance we get. However, if you still feel reluctant, you might literally test the waters by starting with your feet.