One of the best all-around exercises, swimming increases both cardiovascular and muscle strength. There is hardly any stress on your body’s joints, because water turns you into a kind of weightless underwater astronaut, making your every movement an easy, flowing one. But water also offers resistance that helps you build muscle strength and tone.
Doing laps in a pool — no matter what the stroke — is excellent exercise. You can also “take a walk” underwater or perform calisthenics like leg lifts or arm circles. Research shows that water actually offers an equal aerobic workout in less time than one on dry land. A half-hour of walking in water equals the energy output of a two-hour walk in the woods, one study showed. Make sure you’re about chest deep (to benefit from the resistance) and simply go for a stroll.
However，there’s something you should know: Swimming isn’t the greatest exercise for losing actual pounds, according to at least one study published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
Researchers followed the progress of a group of moderately obese but otherwise healthy young women who were trying to lose weight by exercising without changing their diets. The women were divided into three exercise groups. Group one rode stationary bicycles, group two took brisk walks and group three swam laps in a pool. All of them slowly but steadily increased their daily exercise period to 6. 0 minutes. After about six months, the bike-riders had lost 12 percent of their initial weight and the walkers lost 10 percent, but swimmers lost none, and then,keep in mind that swimming has been proven effective in improving muscle tone, and firm muscles contribute significantly to losing inches, if not pounds.
