The staff at Dolphin Academy have been swimming for years. In fact, we love swimming so much, we turned it into our job and started offering swimming lessons professionally. As fun as it is (and it’s really fun!), swimming isn’t just about enjoyment – it’s about competition, self-esteem and health; it’s the best exercise we think you can do and for those of you who aren’t sold yet on why you or your child should learn to swim, we’d like to give you some more reasons.
It’s a fantastic work out for your “core muscles.”
For the fitness fanatics out there trying to strengthen their core muscles we’ve got a suggestion for you: swim. When you’re in the water swimming breast stroke or front crawl, your body needs to be straight and to do this you must use your core abdominal muscles, your oblique muscles and your lower-back muscles. It’s completely necessary to the act of swimming and when you swim, you’ll find you don’t need to concentrate to make sure you’re developing these areas of your fitness.
It’s a brilliant aerobic/cardio exercise.
Aerobic exercise is exercise which makes your heart and lungs work harder and anyone who has swam knows that it does this. Cardio exercise is important because if your heart and lungs are weak, it can contribute to serious diseases and generally make you feel tired when you’re doing normal activities like climbing the stairs. The NHS recommend that adults aged 19-65 try to carry out 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity every week. Why not get your recommended amount with swimming? And, whilst you’re swimming, your body doesn’t need to sweat (you’re already in the water) so you don’t need to worry about the icky feeling afterward like with running.
Your joints will love you.
Swimming is “low-impact.” When you run or jog, your feet hit the ground and the full weight of your body is absorbed. This isn’t the case with swimming. Because water is denser than air, it pushes up against your body and counteracts the effect of gravity, making the impact on your joints much less. Don’t worry though – the fact you fall less hard doesn’t mean it’s “easier” than running. Why? The same reason; because water is denser than air, when you’re swimming through the water you’re having to push against something tougher than when you’re running through air.
It’s never too late to start (or too early) to swim.
Some exercises people do to build core muscles or cardio-health tend to get harder when your older, or be dangerous for the young. Can you imagine a baby weight lifting? We can’t – but we know they swim all the time at baby swim classes! For baby swimming we recommend our partners at Our First Steps and their parent and baby swimming lessons. Swimming is often recommended by doctors for people recovering from an illness or older people who would benefit from more activity. This is because doctors know it’s easy to control the amount of activity and gentle on the joints.
We honestly do mean that it’s never too late to start. At Dolphin Academy, we offer private swimming lessons from our bases in Oldham, Ashton and Bury, just get in touch with us for more information. If you want to take advantage of the benefits of swimming – contact us and we’ll get you started.