What are the benefits of swimming?

Hi Katy

Swimming is a very strange activity when it comes to calorie expenditure and burning fat. My experience, especially with women, is that despite swimming burning lots of calories and using all of the body's main muscle groups, it somehow doesn't cause that much fat burning. Some people theorize that it is because it isn't weight bearing or that the legs are only minimally challenged and therefore your largest muscles aren't participating to a great enough extent but whatever the reason, I've known girls who can swim the crawl at a good pace for 100 laps and they weren't lean and they didn't eat excessively. It seems to me that if you put the same intensity into running on the treadmill, using the rowing machine or the exercise bike, you'd probably get better results.

Remember though, studies are quite clear that fat loss results come primarily from diet, although obviously exercise accelerates progress and improves your look when you've shed the fat!

Hi,

Mark - As I try to remember back to my undergraduate exercise physiology classes, I remember one of my professors explaining that because there is a temperature gradient between the water temperature and our body temperature, our bodies tend to hold onto some fat to keep us warm in the colder water... Does this sound right?

Katy - That being said, swimming is a fantastic exercise and if you think that you would enjoy adding it to your current exercise program, then I suggest that you go for it. There are so many more wonderful health benefits associated with a physically active lifestyle beyond weight loss that swimming will help you achieve and I really believe that if you are going to enjoy swimming then start including it into your workout because it is fun.

I really believe that exercise needs to be fun. If it isn't fun, no matter how effective it might be in helping us achieve our goals, we won't maintain the activity long term.

Good point Lauren. I tend to assume the key goal is weight loss because that's almost exclusively what people's goal is from doing "cardio" exercise whenever I get asked about it. Swimming is fantastic from a health point of view and swimmers are tremendously fit athletes but for fat loss, it may not be the best use of your time, Katy.

Also, yes Lauren, I had heard about the thermal protection thing from swimming but didn't know if there was actually any science behind it but it's probably a better theory than mine above...thanks for the tip!