Swim to stay fit

Among the many benefits, swimming for fitness can improve your sleep patterns, lower your cholesterol levels, improve digestion and keep your well-toned. Swimming can also build cardioid-respiratory fitness and muscle mass, help those suffering from asthma or arthritis, help you to lose weight and be used for injury rehabilitation. If you have easy access to suitable pool or swimming area, then staying fit by swimming might be an ideal choice for you.

1. Lookout for swimming locations.

In your area before making your fitness plans. It is important to be comfortable with the swimming location. The place must be reasonably easy for you to get regularly, the price must be affordable and it should feel comfortable to you personally. Choice available include community pools, sports center pools, lifeguard patrolled seaside pools and neighborhood pools.

2. Purchase appropriate equipment.

You will need a good swimsuit -- for women, this should be one piece. For men, choose swimming pants that cling, not board shorts or any other type of shorts. If you try to keep wearing flappy swimming gear, you will find it tends to affect your kick and can lead to bad kicking habits that only make use of the lower part of the leg. Goggles are also essential for most pools if your eyes are affected by chlorine (few people can swim regularly in chlorinated water without goggles on).

3. Plan to swim regularly.

Fitness benefits will only come from regular swimming. While the most benefits will probably result from swimming two or three times a week, even once weekly swims should help to improve your fitness levels. Choose a consistent schedule that you know you will be able to meet each week and mark it on your calendar.

4. Choose your swimming strokes.

According to what you enjoy (an important motivation for staying fit), what you are able to do efficiently and what will benefit you. For most fitness swimmers, a combination of strokes tends to be the most interesting and useful approach.

* Freestyle (front crawl):

This is the most popular competitive swimming stroke and if you are good at it, you can go quite fast. It is good for stretching your entire body, in particular your shoulders and back, biceps, triceps, quadriceps, glutes and hamstrings. But for those with weak arm muscles, it can feel like enormously hard work. Persist though, as this is a good all-round, efficient stroke and it just feels good to go through the water quickly once you have built up your speed.

* Breaststroke:

This can actually feel very relaxing and easy to do because you get to control the pace and still benefit from it as a workout. it is a good stroke for in between the faster swimming laps, when you want to keep going but at a slower pace. It is an ideal stroke for developing all-body strength and increasing your endurance and has the same benefits as freestyle, with the added extra of working out your thighs and pectorals.

5. Get started.

Push your self to do a lap of your favorite stroke to begin with and see how it feels. The idea is to try and swim for 10 minutes the first few visits, and to gradually built up to 30 minutes each visit. When you are comfortable at that level, 45-60-minute swims can then be considered, depending on what time you have available and how much you feel additional time is benefiting you. Regularly increase the amount you are doing each week - it is a good idea to push yourself just beyond what you think you can do each time.

6. Plan fitness workout routines.

Initially, you will want to get into a rhythm of turning up regularly and get moving. However, within a short space of time, it is important to establish a routine. A very basic stater routine would be something like: 2 x laps freestyle; 2 x laps backstroke; 2 x laps breaststroke; 2 x laps with kickboard; 2 x laps freestyle; then do a swim-down. This will provide a complete body workout at an easy pace which can be doubled, tripled, etc., as you improve over time.

Taken from: News Straits Times - 3 August 2012 (article), Google (images).