Making Waves in Your Exercise Routine

It’s easy to become stuck in a routine.  This is especially true when it comes to our exercise schedule.  We are creatures of habit. However, there are great benefits to varying our exercise routines.  With summer here, let’s look at some reasons to incorporate swimming.

Why should you swim?

Swimming is unique because it uses several different muscle groups. The glutes and hips for kicking, the core for rotating and flip-turning at the wall, and our shoulders and arms for pulling. When we exercise horizontally, our blood return is higher, because the blood doesn’t have to compete with gravity to move throughout our body.  Therefore, our heart pumps harder to keep the blood cycling to the muscles, possibly hitting a higher VO2 max in the water than on land.

Incorporate intervals.

One way to boost our cardiovascular efforts is to incorporate intervals.  Similar to a Water Aerobics class, we can find ways to jump and use our arms and legs in different positions, pushing the intensity for a certain amount of time and recovering between each cycle.

A strong core is key.

Swimming is also a fantastic exercise for strengthening our core. When we do freestyle, for example, our abs, obliques, and lower back muscles help to stabilize our position and rotate us from side to side, while our upper back muscles work with our shoulders to pull through the water. A strong core is key for maintaining good posture and reducing lower back pain.

While we may feel swimming focuses on the upper body, our hip flexors and legs are just as important for driving our stroke. Kicking helps us in strengthening our quads, hamstrings, and glutes by activating them.

Swimming is a non-impact sport, which helps us recover from other exercise. Of all the low-impact exercises, such as cycling, elliptical, and rowing, swimming causes the least biomechanical stress (i.e. high-impact pounding) on the body.

The strokes we use matter, too. In addition to our deltoids and latissimus dorsi general, the following muscle groups are used with these strokes:

  • Freestyle: chest, triceps, biceps, forearms, quads, middle and upper back, and neck
  • Breast stroke: chest, back of your shoulders, quads, and calves
  • Butterfly: chest, shoulders, neck, abs, upper back, lower back, calves, quads, lateral hamstring, and trapezoids
  • Backstroke: middle and upper back, trapezoids, quads, and glutes

In general, it’s great to shoot for 30 minutes in the pool. Regardless of time, it’s ideal to try to keep our heart rate up for as long as we can.

We can get in the pool and just go, but it may also help to have some structure in place for our workout. If we prefer to swim laps, aim to swim 1,000 yards in 30 minutes. (For the record, most swimming pools are 25 yards long.)

Consider trying the following swimming exercises:

Beginner
  • 4 x 25 yard warm up
  • 2 x 25 yard freestyle with 40 seconds rest in between each 25
  • 2 x 25 yard kick of your choice with one minute rest between each 25
  • 2 x 25 yard backstroke with 50 seconds rest in between each 25
  • 2 x 25 yard breast stroke kick with one minute rest in between each 25
  • 2 x 25 yard kick of your choice
  • 2 x 25 yard cool down
Seasoned

(Heads up: grab a kickboard for this and, when using it, hold it in front and kick the legs straight out behind the body.)

  • 4 x 50 yard warm up
  • 2 x 50 yard freestyle in two minutes. (If you finish the 50 yards in one minute, then you get one min of rest. If you finish the 50 yards in 1:30, then you get 30 seconds rest)
  • 4 x 75 yard freestyle in 2 minutes and 15 seconds
  • 2 x 100 yard alternating freestyle and using a kickboard with 30 seconds rest after each 100
  • 2 x 50 yard freestyle in two minutes
  • 2 x 50 yard kickboard in two minutes
  • 4 x 50 yard freestyle in one minute