This is a guest post brought you by Kaitlin Gardner from AnApplePerDay.com which was created to further her passion for a family friendly, green living lifestyle. She is married to her college sweetheart and lives in Pennsylvania. She and her husband enjoy going for long hikes, to get out and enjoy nature. She is working on her first book about ways to live an eco-friendly, healthy, natural life.
As my Dad got older, I watched him start to be at risk for heart problems. He was a competitive runner and played football in college. When he got out of school, he took a job as a salesman, rode in a car a lot, hosted a lot of lunches, and gained a lot of weight. I encouraged him to return to exercise, and told him about how beneficial swimming could be for his heart.
Lowered risk for heart disease. Swimming is well known as a strenuous form of exercise, because it can so powerfully burn calories, more than walking or other forms of exercise. Swimming will lower the blood pressure, reduce the risk of obesity and therefore reduce the risk of heart disease. It can keep the arteries flexible, which allows them to better pump blood. A good swim also provides a very calming routine of movement – for a salesman with a stressful lifestyle, this can be much needed stress relief.
As I researched swimming, I ran across a fascinating piece of information. In the water,the resting heart rate is about 10 beats per minute lower than on land, and the max heart rate is 10 to 30 beats per minute lower. Apparently it is not clearly known why that happens, but it is thought to be because of the lowered gravity in the water, and the lower temperature of the water. The benefit for swimmers is that the heart has to work less when exercising, so the body can exert solid effort, but with less stress on the heart. That is an amazing dvantage that exercise on land doesn’t provide.
Other benefits of the water. For someone just getting back into exercise, like my Dad, swimming is a great choice because it is a low impact sport. There is no stress on the bones or joints, because of the wonderful buoyancy provided by the water. The body only has to support a fraction of its weight when you are swimming, and that lightness makes it easy on the body. In addition, swimming is a whole body workout – you have to use almost all of the major muscle groups. Just take a look at a competitive swimmer like Michael Phelps to see how well swimming can tone the body. Yes, we’d all like to be ripped like that, but just to have better muscle tone will be a super result for most of us.
Don’t overdo it. For a person who used to be very competitive athletically, I had to suggest that my Dad use moderation when he took up swimming. A typical recommendation is 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 days a week. But for a beginner in the water, 10 to 12 minutes of easy lap swim in the pool is a good goal. Later the length of the swim can build as endurance grows. It’s time to improve heart health, not overstress your heart.
Swim to feel great. After my Dad took up swimming, I could really see the difference after just a couple of weeks. He swam after work, and though he still couldn’t swim for long, he looked better when he came home. He was more calm, had a spring to his step, and smiled a lot more freely. When he came home after a doctor visit, his blood pressure had dropped, and he was thrilled about that. When I asked my Dad how he liked his new regimen of swimming, he just got a huge smile and gave me a big thumbs up. I was delighted.
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