How Swimming Gives You A Whole Body Workout

Most of the times, men turn to their bikes or the treadmills for having cardiovascular workouts, in case, they don’t have much physical activity to do in their daily routine. As such machines are available readily in most of the gyms, they make for a simple solution for just about everyone. However, visiting one of your local pools, or having one built in your backyard, can allow you to have a challenging workout in all new manner.

You might have already heard that swimming gives you a perfect workout and makes for an amazing exercise, but you may not have actually heard how exactly does it do that. And, if you have your own swimming pool ready, built by a contractor as good as Sats Services, then you must know the different types of swimming workouts you can get and how they affect your entire body. Let’s get into some details before you start using swimming to your benefit.

Normally, there are four different stroke types that you can perform while swimming, these include freestyle, butterfly, breaststroke, and backstroke. Among all these, the butterfly is considered to be the hardest one. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at each of these different types of swimming strokes.

1. Freestyle

This type of swimming workouts is also called as the Australian crawl or front crawl. Just as its name implies, freestyle swimming doesn’t have any kind of limitations whatsoever on how you should be moving your legs and arms; all you have to make sure is to keep a part of your body above water all the time, except for initial 15 meters as you start and also after every turn. It is the most appropriate swimming style for beginners. Every 150-180 pound male is able to burn around 500 calories every hour with this type of swimming exercise at moderate intensity. Increase the intensity and you are up for burning almost 700 calories in an hour. When you are swimming freestyle, you are actually giving a workout to your deltoids and the leg muscles.

2. Breaststroke

As far as breaststroke is concerned, it gives you a better-defined movement pattern. You must keep the shoulders aligned with water while coordinating your leg and arm movements for pushing together and performing exactly the same actions. The arms tend to move out from the chest as well as around sides of the body, going back up and along center once again for returning to initial position. Remember to mimic these same movements with the legs as well. During your first stroke and also after each turn, you can have an arm stroke as well as a leg kick while keeping the head in the water. Other than that, however, you must keep the head above water. If you keep swimming for an hour with breaststroke motions, you’ll be able to burn almost 750 calories. This swimming motion allows you to work out the muscles you have in the biceps, gluteal, and the thighs.

3. Butterfly

This is another popular stroke that many regular swimmers love actually. While performing butterfly swim, you have to move the arms together from right behind you, going up as well as out of the water, and ending above the head before you go into the water once again. As you do so, your legs are doing a typical dolphin kick movement. When performing this stroke, you are actually working out the shoulder muscles and it’s often recommended for anyone who is very much developed in that area. Often considered the hardest of all the swimming strokes that you can perform, it asks for maximum energy output while making you expend almost 800 calories every hour. Butterfly stroke gives a workout to your leg muscles, abdominals and deltoids.

4. Backstroke

The last of the most popular movements that you can perform as you swim in the backstroke. For this movement, you have to make sure that your back is facing towards the water and you move your legs and arms in the same way as you do freestyle stroke. So, the only major difference is that you have a 180-degree shift to your position and the rest goes the same as in the case of freestyle swimming. While performing backstroke swimming, you will be burning almost 500 calories every hour as well. It is important to remember that you need to be well aware of your body position as you perform this stroke in your swimming pool because you’ll not be able to see that wall approaching. So, it’s better to be careful. Also, the muscles in the triceps and your legs are worked out while performing this particular stroke.

Whatever stroke you perform, it is aimed at working out a certain group of muscles in your body. All you have to ensure is that you are apt at each of these motions and do not end up doing these wrong. You will eventually have a whole body workout as all your muscle groups will be involved in this activity. Besides, it will also be a fun experience and you’ll love it for sure!