Advantages and Disadvantages of Swimming

Want to lose weight and tone up your body, then try swimming. This is a perfect aerobic exercise to get into shape. The feeling of the weightlessness inside the water helps you to make more effort without tiring yourself in the process. This is one of the advantages of swimming and others of them are discussed here in detail.

Reduce stress on joints

This is a low impact exercise, therefore it can be even performed by patients with limited movements. The buoyancy of water provides the weightlessness effect and thus reduces stress on your joints [1].

Weight loss

Although, this is a low impact exercise it helps in burning lots of calories because of its intensive nature. For example, a freestyle swimming with less effort can burn 600 calories in an hour and a fast-paced burns 943 calories in an hour. It means you will definitely lose your extra pounds if you practice it regularly [2].

Overcomes the overheating risk

When our body spends energy on building muscles and melting fat deposits during workouts then it also generates heat, which raises the body temperature and causes overheating. But since swimming involves aqueous medium, therefore, the body temperature remains constant means no overheating [3].

Improves the physiology

Swimming gives you a full body workout as it involves active participation of upper body and lower body, especially arms and legs for the continuous movements. Therefore, it improves all the organ systems of the body, mainly the cardiovascular, nervous and muscular [4].

Relieves mental stress

The weightlessness leaves a calm and soothing effect on the body and it also releases the physical and mental stress. It also reduces the stress hormone, thus makes you more energetic while boosting up your metabolism. It also makes you focus and more coordinated.

Though swimming has various advantages, it also has a fair share of disadvantages and awareness of its disadvantages helps you in practice swimming in a wise manner. Thus, you can prevent any accidents or injury [5].

It strengthens your heart

Swimming is a great workout for the heart and the lungs. This will let your body use oxygen more efficiently. As a result, your breathing and heart rates get reduced to normal resting rates. As a result, your heart becomes stronger when you swim regularly.

Swimming helps prevent diseases

Swimming daily for 30 minutes can help prevent many diseases, including diseases related to the heart. In addition, swimming can help you maintain a healthy weight. A healthy weight means a healthy body that means no diseases.

Disadvantages of swimming

Drowning

The biggest fear and risk of getting into the water is drowning. If you are new to this exercise, then follow each and every instruction of your instructor. Tell the lifeguard to keep an eye on you for an extra safety. Take all precautionary measures in case of kids like life jackets and regular check.

Chlorine effect

The water of the pool is mostly chlorinated and it can be absorbed by your skin and by lungs while breathing, which can cause skin allergy or respiratory problems like asthma. It makes your skin dry and also leaves a greenish layer on your hair if you don’t wash it off after the swim.

Open swimming threats

Open swimming like at sea, lake or river can increase the chances of drowning because the water currents are not stable like in pools. They are more dynamic and can pull you along with it. Aquatic animals like Jelly fishes, sharks, crabs, crocodiles, alligator, etc. are other threats as they can harm you physically. You can also injure yourself while diving into shallow water.

Over swimming

Excessive practice of swimming can cause damage to your joints such as tendinitis in the knees. It can also darken your skin because it requires a minimum coverage of the body and since the body is always surrounded by water therefore you also don’t feel the sunburn. It can also cause infection of the ear and from viruses in case of using public pools.

Fungal infections

An athlete’s foot is a fungal infection that grows in moist and warm conditions. A swimming pool provides the perfect condition for fungal infections to grow. This means that anyone who does swimming daily is at risk of getting fungal infections.

Skin Allergies

While swimming in warm or freshwater lakes or ponds, you are prone to skin allergies. Swimming pools use chlorine to keep their water clean. When exposed to chlorine regularly, people get chlorine rash which is a type of skin allergy.