Swimming, Health and Wellness
Swimming is an activity that offers physical and mental benefits. It is performed without impact exercises, there is a great aerobic development and involve almost every muscle groups, which favors the activity of the cardiopulmonary and muscular systems, providing greater mobility and elasticity to the body.
It also helps to stop idleness, prevent diseases like diabetes and hypertension and works as a sport that discharge energy caused by stress.
Overall, it keeps a person in good health, provides wellness, helps to have emotional and psychological balance, and its persistent practice creates a competitive nature.
Multiple benefits
It is a sport that almost every person can practice. The physical development that it offers, especially when it is practiced since an early age, it’s not only an excellent basis for the body's health, but also for its aesthetic and emotional stability.
Cardiovascular: Aerobic exercise strengthens the heart and it will lose the fat around it. Each beat is more powerful and can move more blood around the body.
Respiratory: It strengthens all the muscles, including those in charge of filling and emptying the air from the lungs, this makes that in each breath, you can take in more air with less energy, generating more efficient breathing.
Muscular: The muscles bulge getting stronger and resistant to injury.
Psychological: Increases security and self-esteem, and reduces stress.
Water provides relaxation, wellbeing and helps release energy. Furthermore, it was found that the higher the water temperature, the higher the emotional release. Swimming is an psychological therapy for excellence. It is important to know that, if swimming is practiced as a competitive sport, water cannot be hot.
Children and babies
Swimming has a psychological effect on children, because with water, they learn to interact, to communicate, and to see aquatic life as a recreation and motivation source for the development and relationships with others. The coach is responsible for developing in children adaptive instincts, security and confidence.
Swimming can be practiced with or without competitive goals during almost all life time. Experts advise taking children from 3 months of age.
From a competitive point of view, swimming helps children develop their skills, abilities and physical attributes. The ideal temperature for practice must be between 26 and 38 degrees Celsius.
Be careful with the abuse of the requirement in children. Classes should be provided according to age. If the child is small, he or she should learn skills and abilities, as they see swimming as a game, after 12 years, character and learning, coach should focus on teaching competition skills, at the age of 14 the child must think of competition, for finally at 18 already has a competitive mind.
In adulthood swimming is no longer practiced as competition, but as recreation and exercise.
Heating and continuity
Swimming is an endurance sport, so before entering the water it is important to do a warm up for 15 to 20 minutes to prevent muscle or cardiovascular injures. Before any activity you must prepare your shoulders and hips and lubricate the entire body.
If in order to compete, you can practice daily. If it’s for reasons of health, three or four times a week. The competitive swimmer completes his training in the gymnasium. Who wants to improve their health, does not require a gym. The person who wants to learn to swim should practice the activity for two to four sessions a week, trying to have constant classes; otherwise he or she would forget the lesson faster.
Those who practice this activity should be well hydrated, since the release of energy, exhaustion and fatigue, cause loss of fluids. Therefore, it is recommended that the person hydrate their body, and eat immediately after swimming out to retrieve glucose in muscle, since muscle gets exhausted and loses consistency and energy.