Swimming- The Sport, The People and The Benefits

The world is full of sporting activities. There are hundreds of interesting sports for you to learn about and participate. A few of the most popular sports include football, rugby, golf, athletics, cricket, tennis, boxing, motor racing, and swimming among many others. To make you enjoy every bit of any of these sports, increased organization and regulations have been put in place to transform these games from the ancient Olympics games to what you see today. You do not have to worry about your gender when you want to participate in any of these sports, unlike several decades ago which was a male dominated era.
Swimming is one of the ancient Olympics games that have maintained their place and that will still leave you amused today. This is because it is the best all-round activity for you to take part in, regardless of your age, gender or ability. It provides you with a perfect way of becoming more enthusiastic and staying healthy.

The following are the top six benefits of swimming:

1.       Physical advantages
The physical characteristics of water such as ability to offer buoyancy make swimming a distinctive sport. Buoyancy provides you with the ability to perform exercises considered difficult or impossible on dry land. Unlike strenuous sports, for example racing, which strain your joints so much and puts you in a state of jeopardy (considering the risk of accidents), swimming is a non-strenuous sport that is not likely to result into joint or any sort of injuries. This is because water resistance reduces your movements by increasing the difficulty of moving your joints if you compared it to exercising on dry land. It also cools your body during hot weather.

2.       Increasing your life span
Life is so sweet and you do not have to miss any bit of it. A study conducted by the South Carolina University revealed that, out of forty thousand men observed for 32 years, fifty percent who swam regularly had lower death rate than non-swimmers.

3.       Swimming for recreation
Swimming is a joyous and frivolous exercise for everybody, whether young or old. Recreational swimming is a low-impact exercise and provides us with the best way to relax and feel good. Common leisure swimming styles include, backstroke, sidestroke, breaststroke and freestyle.

4.       Improving your moods
Your experience, plus how you swim does not matter, because the baseline is that swimming makes you feel better. In fact, an American study revealed that beginners and intermediate swimmers relieved depression, tension, and anger through swimming. This is because it stimulates release of the cheerful-hormone serotonin.

5.       Health benefits
Swimming is an interesting kind of exercise because it requires you to move your entire body against water resistance. It can be described as an all-round activity and oozes with a number of health benefits:  

– Relieves stress and keeps your heartbeat in good condition.
– It strengthens your muscle and regulates your cardiovascular fitness.
– Helps keep a healthy body weight, fit heart and lungs
– Helps you develop muscles and increase strength, just think about the fitness of the all time Olympic great Michael Phelps, also known as the Baltimore Bullet.
– Provides a whole body exercise, this is because swimming involves almost all body muscles.
– Keeps body in proper shape. You do not have to become Olympic gold medalist to have the perfect body shape. Swimming offers the perfect solution and you will see your shape improve beyond the swimming superstars of the likes of Coughlin Natalie.

6.       Social benefits
Swimming brings lots of fun. It is an exciting sport that you will always enjoy taking part.
It provides a platform to mingle with other people. At the swimming pool, you enjoy meeting with people from diverse backgrounds with whom you form new friendship.
What’s more, swimming is one of the most popular games in the international sporting arenas such as Olympics. Although, soccer is perceived as the number one sport in the world in terms of popularity, swimming and athletics reaches their peak during Olympics, completely overshadowing the popular soccer. This is due to contribution of world swimming superstars and Olympic gold medalists. Think about the male category Olympic gold champions such as the most decorated Olympic athlete Michael Phelps, Matt Biondi, Ryan Lochte, Mark Spitz, Johnny Weissmuller and Aaron Peirsol from America, and the Australian gold winner Ian Thorpe.

Women swimmers have not been left out of the Olympics bandwagon. The famous Olympic gold medalists in the female category include Dawn Fraser from Australia, Inge de Bruijn from the Dutch, Krisztina Egerszegi from Hungary, Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe, Mary T. Meagher, Jennifer Beth Thompson and Natalie Coughlin from America,