Top 5 health benefits of swimming
“When life gets you down, you know what you’ve gotta do? Just keep swimming.” That’s some great advice by Dory from Finding Nemo.

We do or wish to do everything we can to stay fit and reap the benefits of a healthy body. Following a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle are key to good health. A balanced nutrition, routine exercises, good-quality sleep, proper stress management, and good social life are some of the main components of a healthy lifestyle.

Among all of them, exercise plays a vital role in keeping us fit. There are different types of exercises that you can include in your routine to achieve great results like running, strength training, cardio exercises, and yoga. These exercises together improve your endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility. Along with the physical benefits, daily or regular exercising has multiple psychological benefits including decreased stress and anxiety, better focus and concentration, improved memory, and improved self-esteem and self-confidence. Apart from the abovementioned physical activities, there is another effective and beneficial physical activity that is highly beneficial, which is swimming.

If you swim every day or regularly, you probably feel the benefits already. If you don’t, then here is some information that can motivate you to start swimming on a regular basis.

Swimming not only demands focus, strength, stamina, and fitness, it also builds these things in you. It is an exercise that requires balance and coordination in movements of the entire body, which in turn requires a great amount of focus. Hence, the more you swim, the more focused, strong, and fit you become. Below are the various physical benefits of swimming regularly.

Weight loss
The reason this is on the top of the list is that every third person today wants to lose some extra pounds, and swimming is one of the best and quickest ways to lose those extra pounds. When you swim, your entire body works toward keeping you afloat and moving forward. This makes you burn calories and lose fats from various parts of your body.

You can perform breaststroke, backstroke, sidestroke, butterfly, and freestyle as they are the best swimming methods that help you in losing weight.

Strengthens and builds muscles
You must have seen many fitness junkies entering the swimming pool to attain a ripped body despite spending ample time in the gym. This is because swimming builds muscles mass. Muscles grow when they stretch, tear, and recover through resistance exercises, and swimming is a great resistance exercise. It works without putting any consequential amount of stress on the bones and joints as opposed to weightlifting. In fact, swimming helps in building muscles relatively faster and is more effective than traditional cardio exercises.

Stronger internal organs
Along with building strong muscles and losing weight, swimming makes your heart and lungs stronger. It improves your breathing capacity; therefore, it is highly beneficial for those who suffer from asthma. Additionally, swimming improves the blood flow throughout the body and reduces the risk of coronary heart diseases. Swimming also lowers the blood pressure and raises the high-density lipoproteins (HDL) cholesterol levels, which is the good cholesterol, in the body.

Improves flexibility
Flexibility is important as it reduces your risk of injuries and muscle pain, improves your posture, makes your body strong, and improves your physical performance and body movements. Though there are multiple exercises that help in increasing flexibility like yoga, stretching, and flexibility-training exercises, swimming is also one of the most effective exercise to improve flexibility. While swimming, you need to stretch your body to its maximum to perform strokes, and this improves the flexibility of your muscles and joints. Therefore, swimming is a great exercise for people who take up flexibility training.

Improves stamina
If your goal is to improve stamina for a particular sport or otherwise, then swimming should be your go-to exercise. If you run out of stamina quickly, then regular swimming for months can help you build it. Swimming increases your lungs’ capacity by helping them use oxygen efficiently, thereby improving your stamina.

Now that you know these valuable benefits of swimming, you must include swimming in your exercise routine. Happy swimming!