Swimming is a fantastic cardiovascular workout that can significantly boost your lung capacity and your heart’s ability to circulate blood, even if you only manage to swim once a week. If you can swim non-stop for about 20 minutes at a steady pace, it transitions into an aerobic exercise that enhances your overall fitness, revs up your metabolism, and helps you burn excess fat.
An hour of swimming can burn around 500 calories for the average adult. It can also help regulate your blood pressure and pulse rates. Benefits like better breathing, even in people with asthma, make swimming a preferred exercise choice.
However, as you become fitter, improving further can be challenging. Your swimming technique will naturally get better, allowing you to sustain your efforts through a few sessions. Even with limited time, you can maximize your workout by changing your stroke.
The basic breaststroke is popular for those using swimming to boost fitness. It’s easy to learn and efficient, allowing a leisurely pace. However, as you become more proficient, you might get less exercise with each stroke because you’re more streamlined in the water.
To keep improving, you might need to push harder and refine your technique, aiming to transition to a more advanced, competitive breaststroke. This requires better technique and more strength for a leaner, more streamlined form. Alternatively, increase your swimming distance or switch to a different stroke.
Freestyle or front crawl is a great next step from breaststroke. Start by adding one length of crawl for every four of breaststroke in your session. You’ll notice a higher heart and lung activity with freestyle because it involves rotating your arms and kicking your legs, which challenges your muscles.
This helps keep up the benefits of swimming without hitting a plateau. With the freestyle, keep your face in the water and turn your head to the side every two to four arms rotations for a breath. Remember to exhale in the water just before coming up for air. Over time, your lung capacity will improve. As you get better, rely less on breaststroke and more on freestyle.
Once you’ve mastered freestyle, you’ll find another fitness plateau. At this point, try incorporating a new stroke. While the butterfly is great, it’s technically demanding, so backstroke might be a better option. Though less intense on your heart and lungs compared to freestyle, it targets different upper body muscles.
Backstroke engages your outer abdominal muscles as you work to keep your body flat in the water. Ideally, you’ll use an alternating kick with slightly bent knees to move forward, with your arms providing most of the propulsion. Once you’re comfortable, you can go full circle and start incorporating breaststroke again to continue the cycle of improvement.