Swimming

[King Tubby]

Could you use it to get your weight down? What would be the best way, plodding along or sprints? I'm not a bad swimmer, quite often do half a mile at a slow place, but not sure it does me much good. Would I be better off sprinting say, 1/6 of a mile or something?

[Joe Boxer]

Swimming is an awesome exercise; it's great for your cardio, and it's also good if you're suffering injuries from running.

But I don't know how good it is for losing weight.

To make matters worse, after being in the pool, all I want to do is EAT. My friends are the same way.

[jonoevansla]

Swimming is a great form of cardio exercise as it is an entire body workout. In terms of losing weight then the benefits will be dependent on how hard you push yourself.

I rarely swim these days, but having just been on holiday swimming was my main source of exercise whilst away for the last 11 days (sad I know). I did some form of swimming most days (I ran a couple of days) and tried to vary the routine - some days I did 45-60mins constant pace, other days I did interval training (eg. 4 lengths steady breast-stroke followed by 4 lengths fast crawl, repeat, repeat,etc), I also varied the strokes to add some variety. I managed to maintain my weight whilst away (despite drinking and eating less healthy than normal). Also, I boxed on the night I returned from hols and actually felt pretty good, so I think the swimming helped improve my general fitness.

[King Tubby]

Cheers Joes.

[Old bones Ian]

Started swimming in my lunchtimes , about 3 times a week.
Having not been for a long time i found i could breast stroke quite easy and it didn't make me out of puff, have now started front crawl, and its so much harder , but i get a shift on now. and manage 30 lengths.

I tend to do one length breast then one length front crawl.

One tip, is get on youtube and watch some of the instructional swimming vids on there, i found that a great help in doing the stroke correctly, and getting the breathing right.

[m1kee50]

I did 10 lengths today, took me about half an hour, I find swimming VERY tiring even over short distances.

[Emmseegee]

I trained for a sprint distance triathlon last year and swimming was my weakest from the three so i had to put the hours in with that department and i found that i toned up and lost weight over a few months. I always train quite hard and vary my training but swimming definitely made a difference for me. Since i stopped swimming I've went down hill a bit again.

After xmas I'm gonna start swimming on a daily basis again with the plan of doing an olympic distance triathlon (twice the distance of a sprint)

so without all the technical talk, i would say swimming helps you lose weight.

[Deserter]

To be frank there are simply more effective ways of achieving weight loss, though swimming does have though peripheral benefits already mentioned such as less stress on the body.
One of the biggest problems with swimming that no-one's mentioned on here to date is that it can make you absolutely ravenous so you end up eating more and having a caloric surplus. You may find this article interesting:
http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/res ... imming.htm