Swimming has been called the perfect exercise. After all, you can get all the benefits of an aerobic workout without any detrimental effect on the joints, and it can be done by both the very old and the very young with lifeguard certification near me.

It is used by athletes to get strong and stay in shape when you recover from injury, and no fancy equipment is needed - just you and the deep blue.

Swimming has many more benefits, as the obvious benefits are seen on the surface; its improvements in overall health go much deeper. So let's take a big breath and dive into the 10 benefits of swimming with American lifeguard association.

Swimming improves muscle definition and strength.

Swimmers gain muscle strength throughout the body. Where runners see muscle building in the legs, swimmers use multiple muscle groups to move through the water. While the legs kick, the arms pull. When the back reaches and rotates, the abdomen tightens to strengthen the legs and stabilizes the core, making swimming one of the best aerobic exercises to give you a total body workout. Just look at Michel Phelps' suitable physique if you need inspiration!

Swimming builds up bone mass.

For years, researchers mocked the idea that swimming affected bone mass. After all, only weight-bearing exercises were able to achieve this benefit, right? Not according to research published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Because there are ethical reasons to avoid in-depth bone examination in humans, the study placed rats in three groups: running, swimming, and a control group without exercise stimulation. While running still showed the highest increase in BMD (Bone Mineral Density), the swimming group also showed advantages over the control group in both BMD and femur weight. While more research is needed, these new findings suggest that previous research rejecting swimming benefits of bone may need to be re-evaluated.

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Swimming helps you stay flexible.

Swimming requires you to reach, stretch, twist and pull yourself through the water. Your ankles become fins and stretch with each kick as you push against the fluid pressure. This does not mean that you should not still stretch alone, but repeated stretching found in your various strokes also helps with flexibility.

Swimming reduces inflammation.

While the cardiovascular benefits of swimming strengthening the heart muscle are common knowledge, research also indicates aerobic activities, such as swimming, reduce inflammation that leads to the accumulation of atherosclerosis in the heart.

Reducing the whole system inflammation leads to reduced disease progression also in many other areas, so expect to hear about more benefits as research progresses.

Swimming holds itself back for calories burned.

Everyone knows that swimming is a great way to burn calories, but most people are not aware that it can be as effective as jumping on the treadmill. Depending on the stroke you choose and your intensity, swimming can burn equal or greater calories than running.

In addition, you do not have to worry about sweat in the eyes. For example: In 10 minutes of swimming, you burn 60 calories with breaststroke, 80 calories with spine, 100 calories with freestyle and an impressive 150 with butterfly stroke.

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For perspective, burning a 10-minute mile burns about 100 calories. Therefore, a powerful 30-minute butterfly speed session can burn 150 more calories than running a 5K in the same time frame.