Swimming Workout
The swimming workout is a great form of exercise, it provides a great workout for your entire body and it’s also easy on your joints.
Swimming is mainly an aerobic exercise, which is also known as cardio. Cardio has a reputation for helping your body to burn fat without bulking up in muscle and is excellent for improving heart health.
This swimming workout will incorporate many styles or ‘strokes’. This will help you to work different muscle groups in different ways, providing you with a well-rounded and beneficial workout. The particular swimming workout that we are going to highlight today features three specific strokes, however you can choose one or two you prefer if you don’t want to do all three. Just make sure you change up your routine every now and again to improve your results.
Before we actually start the workout, make sure that you warm up first to prevent injury. The following styles or strokes below should be done at a “jogging-like” speed for a total of 6 minutes, that’s 2 minutes for each stroke, before you begin your workout.
The first stroke is the butterfly. Alternate between 20 really fast butterfly strokes then follow this with 10 at a more casual pace. The next stroke is known as the “freestyle” stroke.
Do this once you have completed the butterfly strokes. Do it for 30 strokes at a quick pace then once again follow by 10 casual strokes. The breaststroke is the third stroke.
Out of all these strokes, the breast stroke takes the most out of you. Breaststroke for 20 quick strokes at your quickest speed before doing 10 more at a relaxed pace.
These three basic strokes make up the cycle of your workout and you should do 8 of these cycles to complete your workout. If you are newer to this kind of workout begin by completing 4 cycles and work up to completing 8. Increase your swimming workout by 1 cycle every after every workout until you can do the full eight cycles.
When you reach this point of the swimming workout, you can add to the workout intensity by doing more fast strokes during each stroke set. Ideally, you want to go all out for twenty seconds and then slow down for ten seconds and then repeat. If you follow this guideline, the eight cycles should only take four minutes.
This workout is based upon the 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off method which is known as the Tabata Protocol. It takes less time and is much more effective than the conventional slow and steady approach of doing aerobic exercises (running, biking, swimming workout).
When the eight cycles get easy, you can do another either cycles in a row. You don’t need to do more than five cycles. Aim to workout for about 20 minutes and no more.
If you are only using this particular workout routine, it can be successfully done about 3 times each week. If you are currently taking part in muscle gaining workouts then do the swim workout once a week, possibly twice.
Be careful when swimming in this way, it can be easy to get carried away and swim into the end of the pool. It can be dangerous if you’re going all out and bump your head into the edge of the pool.
