Reasons Why Swimming Is the Best Exercise for Children

Swimming is a great exercise at any age. However, swimming can offer a wealth of benefits beyond physical conditioning for children, including social, mental, and safety benefits that other activities just can’t offer. It’s the additional benefits of swimming that make it the best exercise for kids of any age.

Physical Benefits

You can’t talk about the benefits of swimming and why it’s the best exercise without talking about its physical benefits. Swimming is a low-impact workout that provides little chance of injury to bones and joints. Children could experience overuse muscle injuries, but a good coach or trainer will know how to condition his team and students to avoid these types of injuries.

Swimming improves cardiovascular health by increasing the efficiency of the heart muscle, as well as the use of oxygen in the system. Swimming also improves muscle tone and strength, providing a full-body workout that burns calories. There aren’t many other activities that can claim such a wide variety of physical benefits.

Mental Health

Swimming helps children learn to become more disciplined as they perfect strokes and beat their personal best times. As they become more adept at the skills, they gain confidence in their ability to learn. Swimming also instills confidence in a child’s ability to be around water and not get injured as they learn safety skills for in and around the pool.

The physical activity of swimming can help children get control of their thought processes and workout the stress that comes with life as a child. Physical activity is one of the best recommendations for better mental health.

Social Skills

Swim teams offer children the opportunity to join an activity that doesn’t exclude them from the excitement. In some sports, a child without skills won’t see or touch the ball during a game, even if they’re on the field or court. With swimming, your child will be in the water and participating.

More importantly, while swimming can be competitive, oftentimes, the child is competing more against his or her own time than other people. Children get the benefits of camaraderie that team sports offer without the pressure to perform or the humiliation that can occur when a child is not as adept at the sport as their peers.

Lifelong Fitness

Swimming offers children an activity they can do throughout their life. There are few people who can’t get into the water and exercise. Even for those who are injured or overweight, swimming provides an easy exercise to get the body moving and get healthier. Of course, if the child continues the activity, he or she will be more likely to remain healthier and not have to deal with becoming overweight.

Early Involvement

When you get your child involved in swimming early, you can engender a joy and desire to participate in the activity for life. Baby swimming classes in Los Angeles not only keep your child safer around water, but they also help your child have a healthy activity that will allow them to lead a healthier lifestyle as they grow up. Contact us at Swim Right Academy and find out how we can help your child learn to use swimming as much more than a physical conditioner.