Swimming for Health and Fun

This section is all about pool training tips to prepare for outdoor adventures.

Swimming is a lifetime sport that benefits your body, mind and spirit. It develops your general strength, cardiovascular fitness, endurance, and boosts your immune system. The variety of strokes in swimming strengthens all the muscles in the body. This builds up your muscles in a more even way, unlike the gym.

Why do so many People like Swimming?

Some say that they can only hear their breath when swimming which makes the moments the calmest, especially when they are under a lot of stress. You can dive at any time, being quiet and comfortable under water, and stretch out, decompress. Jumping into the water, everything just disappears, you swim happy and free.

Low Risk of Injuries

Swimming is a full body exercise where very little risk of injures is involved. It is a sport for rehabilitation of many injuries as the water allows you to execute movements with lesser body weight. We combine our adventures with moderate walking to explore places out in nature.

Swimming is also a perfect way to burn your calories and maintain or lose your body weight. Most of the people feel happier and more energetic after swimming. Many studies show that swimming helps you live longer.

Drowning Prevention

This training leads to less of a surprise, stress and panic, in the event of falling into water fully clothed, which reduces the risk of drowning in such circumstances. Clothing also provides a buoyancy aid, for example by tying the legs of pants and inflating them with air.

Acclimatisation or training in clothed swimming is part of military and survivalist organisations. Dutch children and adolescents follow several training courses in clothed swimming during their school curriculum, which leads to Zwemdiplomas of increasing levels A, B and C. The latter corresponds to falling into water and self rescue in a winter situation (cold water).

Hypothermia

Outdoor pools can be quite cold and windy. In water, clothing retains its basic thermal insulation property, even when it gets wet inside or when you get out of the water. It keeps body heat against the body, and therefore slows down the feeling of cold. This even applies to the usual clothes that are not designed for water sports or for sport in general. Compression clothing sticks to the skin and even exerts a certain pressure on the muscles.

However, wind chill can quickly cool your body if windproof clothing is not worn, especially on the upper body. In addition, your head loses up to 35% of your body heat, so it can be useful to wear a hooded windbreaker or sweatshirt.

Comfort and Confidence in Water

Swimming fully clothed, in particular at a depth greater than your height, develops a better understanding of the natural environment. Your body learns and memorises the particular sensations of swimming clothed: temperature difference, comfort or discomfort of clothing limiting the mobility of the limbs, and physical effort to be made to move around.

Stress Management

In today’s life we experience stressful situations on a daily basis. Swimming is a great aerobic exercise which helps reduce stress and supports relaxation and recovery, thus leads to a more balanced lifestyle.

A lot of people say that your mind is given a break or meditation while you swim, a great comfort and stress relief.

Soft, lightweight clothes have a soothing effect when relaxing in the water. Their gentle touch on the skin just feels so good. If you haven't done this yet, you're simply missing out a big treat.