Swimming--how effective is it?

Swimming is magical. I was a water baby, on a swim team, and now am a swim teacher. I may be biased :laugh:

In all honesty, swimming is one of the best forms of exercise. I am about to get all scientific on y'all. Water has, I believe, 5x's the resistance of air. Meaning just by moving about in the water you are burning more calories that you would on land. The more effort you put in to moving in the water the greater the calorie burn

Also, the more muscle you have the harder it is to stay afloat. Water is the opposite of dryland workouts because the more fat you have the easier water workouts will be. Buoyancy makes it easier. ( I say this because At my job we have a number of very overweight women who come in, use a few noodles or buoyancy belts, and just float. Then brag in the locker room about how they "worked out" and now are going to go eat mcdonalds because they earned it. Drives me nuts)

Also, on the swim team I could eat anything and everything and didnt gain any fat. I did gain weight but it was muscle. I looked fabulous in my racing suit. Stopped swimming, gained 150lbs in about 6 years. Oh yeah.

In some ways, the health effects of swimming are similar to those of land-based aerobic activities, such as jogging, walking or bicycling, said Hirofumi Tanaka, the director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. Like them, swimming is a “rhythmical aerobic exercise that you can maintain continuously” to improve cardiovascular and muscular health, he said. Experiments by Dr. Tanaka and others have found that swimming “is very effective at reducing blood pressure and improving vascular function,” just as walking and other land-based endurance exercises are.

The unique advantage of swimming is that it is done in water, which provides buoyancy and cooling, Dr. Tanaka said. “So the incidence of orthopedic injury as well as the rate of heat-related illnesses are both low,” he said.

But swimming has a notable drawback. “It seems to stimulate appetite,” Dr. Tanaka said, more so than do vigorous land-based exercises like running. As a result, swimming is not particularly effective at promoting weight loss or maintenance. In a 2005 study of exercise habits and body weight involving more than 15,000 adults ages 53 to 57, those who briskly walked, jogged or cycled gained little weight over the course of a decade. Those who swam tended to pack on pounds.

Still, “there is no doubt that swimming is a beneficial activity for other factors,” particularly cardiovascular health, Dr. Tanaka said. Just skip the celebratory cupcakes after your laps.