Balancing swimming with other sports activities January 4, 2017

Swimming is one of the only major sports that works every muscle group in the body. This, along with its building of endurance, stamina, strength, speed, coordination and flexibility, makes for a highly efficient and effective athletic exercise that encompasses the skills and training that many other sports need as well.

Aside from building strong bodies through proportional muscle development, swimming is also universally beneficial in the world of sports because it is an excellent cardiovascular alternative to running. As you know, for all sports, cardiovascular training is essential as this is the key to staying longer and stronger in the game. Swimming not only increase your heart rate and builds high quality aerobic fitness, but it also forgoes the impact stress on your body that running on land has. In fact, out of all the major sports swimming is known to be one of the least likely to cause any injuries and can even be done by people with disabilities.

This makes learning how to swim ideal for people who want to start taking up multiple sports and for those who haven’t decided on a main sport to focus on and want comprehensive training in the meantime. In this post we will look at examples of how swimming can help condition you to do better in other major sports and in which specific aspects swimming helps.

BASKETBALL

Swimming being a full-body sport is a big advantage for those who want to play basketball as basketball uses many different muscle groups especially those in the upper body such as the arms, abdomen and back. Basketball requires the development of these muscles to properly perform techniques such as dribbling, shooting and passing. The same muscles used in these moves are also the same muscles used in doing swimming laps such as the biceps in freestyle strokes, the pectorals in breaststrokes and the lat muscles in butterfly strokes.

BASEBALL

Whether you are a pitcher or a catcher, or on the batting post, playing a good baseball game requires good shoulder strength. Swimming provides ample amounts of exercise which train the shoulders without causing too much stress on them. Certain strokes such as the breaststroke for example on the shoulder muscles. With the help of water resistance, doing shoulder exercises under water enables athletes to stabilize their shoulder blades.

FOOTBALL

Since the sport is very heavy on the leg use and leg training, Soccer players are under the risk of overexerting themselves and eventually injuring their legs. Swimming workouts can effectively isolate the upper-body muscles providing an exercise routine that is low-stress for the lower-body which players can do while their leg muscles recover. Under-water running makes for another great exercise for soccer players. Using a buoyancy vest, this exercise has the athlete running while submerged in the deep end of the pool, training the hips through movements against the water resistance.

These are just some of the ways swimming complements other sports. When you start swimming and start trying other sports you will discover that there is a myriad of other athletic pursuits which swimming workouts enhance.