Swim for Exercise in Extreme Summer Heat

Just think of the great health benefits you would be giving to your body if you found an exercise that not only allows you to keep cool in the heat but enhances your health.

One that would provide a decrease of impact on your body by ninety percent, raise your energy that you exhausted in quadruple amounts and help develop the muscles in your body.

No it is not an expensive total body work out machine it is as simple as nature has provided for thousands and thousands of years called water.

We have all heard of exercises to give us cardiovascular benefits and swimming does just that without same force and pressure on your body you can get from other exercises. Plus with the temperatures still running high in the Detroit area it is much more refreshing than biking down a trail or running laps around a track.

For those of us who wish to keep on exercising through this heat and avoid any heat effects swimming is a great work out and does keep you feeling cool and refreshed.

Director of sports medicine and fitness technology at Keiser University Lakeland Campus, Kasey Mueller, states that swimming offers numerous benefits. In the water you weigh only one tenth of your weight compared to out of the water. Even those people who are larger or have an injury are not placing that much stress on their body such as a walking on a treadmill would place. Your heart rate can still increase giving your body all the exercise required minus the pounding of the heart.

Mueller who use to a competitive swimmer notes you use four times much energy to swim a distance than running the same distance. Swimming will work all the major muscles in the body providing you work the four basic strokes; butterfly, forward crawl, backstroke and breast stroke.

Ms. Mueller made reference to a recent study which had found patients lowered their blood pressure levels by regular swimming. Plus swimming does not have to be an alone activity you can swim with friends or even take a water aerobics class. Plus, you do not swim one lap after the other. Walking in the pool and even wearing a vest to make running in place in the water easier allows the water resistance to heighten the benefits.

Water aerobics is very popular among seniors and those with injuries. The water will allow for reduced impact on the joints and does decrease the risk of injury from falling.

Other benefits provided include:

Develops not only muscle strength but endurance, flexibility and improves posture as well.

Swimming will give you most the aerobic benefits that running provides with numerous benefits of resistance training added.

Swimming is especially great for those persons who are seniors, pregnant, overweight, have leg or back problems.

Swimming does not place strain on connective tissues like other exercises can do such as running.

Swimming is the most injury free sport there is and wonderful exercise from the very young to the elderly.

In Detroit area:

Djah's Aquatic Fitness

Call for directions

Detroit

313-414-9870

Therapeutic Water Fitness

1401 Broadway

Detroit

313-309-9622

Boll Family YMCA

1401 Broadway

Detroit

313-309-9622

Detroit Belle Island

Detroit

Infant and Adult Free Swim Lessons

In various zip codes

Detroit

Sources:

The Ledger

New Fitness