Children Dive into a Pool of Benefits by Learning to Swim

Three Reasons to Swim

·      Survival- “Only 56 percent of Americans can perform the five, core swimming skills¹.” That’s nearly half our country that can’t swim! And over 70% of the world is covered with water. That percentage doesn’t include the thousands of swimming pools and even bath tubs around the world. (Did you know you can drown in just a few inches of water?!) Chances are that in a person’s lifetime, they’re going to encounter a situation that involves them being in or around water.

·      Physical Fitness- Swimming works both cardiovascular health and almost every major muscle in the body. You can also target certain muscles by doing different strokes or workouts such as leg lifts while using water resistance.

--On top of that, water will remove most of the natural stress on your bones and joints because of the lack of gravity. It’s one of the reasons that people use this activity for physical therapy.

·      Increase Overall Quality of life- When kids learn to swim, they decrease fear of being around water and have a chance to take part in so many new activities. These activities such as boating, canoeing, kayaking, water skiing, etc. can bring joy and new experiences into their lives.

--Swimming also reduces stress! You get to give your brain a break by focusing on your exercise and staying afloat. Also, just like any other aerobic exercise it increases endorphins.

Fun Facts About Swimming

• Elephants can swim as many as 20 miles a day — they use their trunks as natural snorkels!
• Niagara Falls has enough water to fill up all the swimming pools in the United States in less than three days!
• The bikini swimsuit was named after a U.S. nuclear testing site in the South Pacific called Bikini Atoll.
• In butterfly stroke and breaststroke, swimmers need to touch the pool with both hands simultaneously when they finish. Swimmers touch the pool with only one hand when they finish in freestyle and backstroke swimming events.
• An hour of vigorous swimming will burn up to 650 calories. It burns off more calories than walking or biking.
• Swimming is a great cardiovascular exercise because you are moving against the water’s resistance, which is over ten times that of the air.
• Even the smallest world nations enjoy a thriving swimming pool industry (e.g. New Zealand pop. 4,116,900 [Source NZ Census 7 March 2006] - with 65,000 home swimming pools and 125,000 hot tub pools).
• The slowest Olympic swim stroke is the breaststroke.
• The fastest and most efficient swim stroke is the crawl/ freestyle.²

¹Almost Half of America Can't Swim, Survey Says. (n.d.). Retrieved July 1, 2015, from http://time.com/106912/red-cross-swimming-campaign/

²Games & Safety. (n.d.). Retrieved July 1, 2015, from http://www.swimmingpool.com/games-safety/pool-fun/fun-facts

³http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/swimming+hole

⁴Wood, E. (n.d.). The Art of Swimming - The Morning News. Retrieved July 1, 2015, from http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-art-of-swimming