Get Email Updates from Google
Swimming Not Best Exercise for Weight Loss and Muscle Toning
Is swimming an effective way to lose weight, build and tone muscle? Swimming is considered as one of the best exercises to lose weight and also to build and tone muscles. Not surprisingly so, because when you swim all your major muscles are called into action. It also has an aerobic effect, so heart and lungs get a good workout too.
To learn how to improve your swimming see this dry swimming workout.
However, a research published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine shows that in the absence of a controlled diet, swimming has little or no effect on weight loss. Professor Grant Gwinup conducted an experiment with the following results.
continued below ....
|
- Test subjects following a walking program lost 17 pounds of weight during the three-month study.
- Those following the cycling program lost 19 pounds of weight.
- However, subjects following the swimming program actually gained 5 pounds.
Astonishing isn’t it? I was surprised too when I first read the report. Professor Gwinup then assumes that swimming in cold water stimulates the appetite to increase caloric consumption.
Professor Louise Burke, Head of Nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport, pointed out that competitive swimmers typically have body fat levels that are higher than those of runners or cyclists who expend a similar amount of energy when they train.
“typical body fat levels of these athletes are significantly higher than runners or cyclists who expend similar or even smaller amounts of energy in their training. Many female swimmers have fought well-publicized battles with their body fat levels and with their coaches! They are generally prescribed “land training” (running or cycling) in addition to their many laps of the pool in the belief that it is a necessary treatment to produce lower skinfold levels.” Louise Burke, Australian Institute of Sport. Sportssci.org
Many people feel hungry after swimming and may simply replace all the calories they’ve burned with a large meal after their swim.
“Some research suggests that this is due to the cool temperatures in which swimmers train. By contrast, runners and cyclists usually experience an increase in body temperature during training, which may serve to suppress appetite – at least in the short term” Professor Burke.
Professor Burke further said that competitive swimmers are less active outside their training sessions. They are so tired from the hours spent training that they sleep, sit or otherwise avoid any real physical activity outside their sessions.
Swimming is not a very effective way to build muscle, as most of the work your body does when swimming involves positive muscle actions, like pushing up a bench press. There are no negative actions, like lowering the weights during a bench press, at all. We know that the negative move during weight training is important to build muscles and burn fat.
Doing any exercise is better than not exercising at all. So go ahead and swim so that you can have various forms of exercises to beat the boredom of doing the same things all the time. Just make sure that you don’t eat more or become more sedentary after your swim.
Swimming is still an excellent form of exercise. It can help you lose weight and tone your muscles. Just bear in mind that it is not the most efficient way to do either.
Related articles:
- Swimming for Fitness
- Michael Phelps – Greatest Olympic Swimmer – Workouts and Diet
- How To Teach Your Baby Swimming
Sponsor: Swimshop.co.uk – “We have a fantastic range of Swimwear and Swimming Accessories designed to meet the requirements of the Swimmer, Coach, Water Polo Player or Triathlete. The range includes products selected from many Leading International Brands such as Speedo, Nike & Adidas. We import products from all over the world and this enables us to offer many new and innovative products.
Author, Chris Chew, is a personal trainer of actors, pageant winners, models and other celebrities. Read more of his articles at Burn fat quickly grow muscles fast! and Singapore fitness instructors
Tweet Me!
14 Responses to “Swimming Not Best Exercise for Weight Loss and Muscle Toning”
Post Your Message
I think swimming is the same as working out in a gym. People think they burn calories when they eat more. They’re actually only replacing what they lose or perhaps even more calories burned.
Oh, I don’t necessarily agree with that study at all. While it says that “Many people ….” that doesn’t mean we all do. I know for sure that my appetite doesn’t grow after an hour of swimming. All I crave once I’m out is a good dose of water in my system and I’m good to go. To be honest, I think when people get hungry after swimming is also due to their mentality. Of course their body temperature goes down, that’s what a shower in the changing room is for…. it helps warm your body up and is fine afterwards.
This article is a bunch of BS. Look at pro swimmers like Phelps. No body fat. Swimming builds muscle and gives you that toned lean look AND burns fat. If you swim correctly and get your heart rate up you will see great results as long as you diet along with it. Obviously you need to know what you’re doing and and can’t make it a leisure activity. You HAVE to swim hard and for at least 45 minutes with minimal rest.
That may well be true. But no not forget, professional swimmers do have a strict diet and spend time in the gym also, and work at a far greater rate than the average person trying to lose a bit of weight.
Also, note that it says “in the absence of a controlled diet, swimming has little or no effect on weight loss.” This is the same for many sports and exercise. Research has shown that diet combined with exercise makes you lose weight. The increase in metabolism as a result of exercise is often negligible.
Hopefully no more people who read this article will be fooled and can actually benefit from swimming, losing weight, and being overall healthy. That is the goal of this website right? Truth and Facts.
I’d like to think a website dedicated to health and well being would never allow such an article to circulate and if they did, and were given some concrete facts to make them second guess their publication, write up a correction or new article, maybe one that they actually researched and didn’t throw together in a hurry, because that is what this looks like, no, that is what this IS.
Let me be more specific. I am not a professional swimmer and I only swim 2-3 times a week for about 30 minutes each session. I have lost 15 pounds in 4 months and have lowered my body fat to 10.8%. I am by no means a professional nor do I have a strict diet. I swim as an average person trying to lose a bit of weight. I do not work out at extreme intensity, and anyone (with a little practice) could swim at the same level in the time it took me to do it. And ANY kind of exercise (“in the absence of a controlled diet”) will do squat if you eat whatever you want, so why would you even put that in the article? It is very misleading and only confuses readers who don’t know anything about swimming. Swimming is also great because it builds muscle all over your body AND burns fat. The more muscle you have the higher your metabolism and the more fat you burn. Doesn’t that sound like it is better than say running or cycling? Also, one of the reasons the swimmers weighed more at the end of this study is because the muscle they built weighs more than fat. And the whole part about swimming in cold water has been proven false, it WAS just a theory though. Readers would rather hear the facts. And if you are swimming to the point of getting a good workout, you will raise your body temperature even in cold water. Because of the lower resistance you can’t just float through the water you have to SWIM. People make the mistake of thinking they can barely kick and move their arms and get a good workout. WRONG. But this article is about SWIMMING, there is no magic to losing weight. And YES, Competitive Swimmers are less active outside of their training session because they usually last for 3 hours. Didn’t you say this article was for average people trying to lose a bit of weight? How does that even compare? And finally, swimming builds muscle, but more specifically it tones. You won’t get huge from swimming but you will build muscle. Don’t bother believing anything in this article, if you want to swim make sure you work at it and you will lose weight. Swimming is one of if not the best form of exercise.
Davey Boy, this article does not say that swimming will not get you fit, neither does it intend to imply that swimming will not help you lose weight. The article refers to a discussion by Dr. Louise Burke from the Australian Institute of Sport which to explain the empirical evidence that swimmers had higher bodyfat than land based exercisers (reference added above).
Swimming is an excellent form of exercise, there is no doubt about that. But if you are looking to get very toned, then most people will need to do some land based exercise also – running, cycling etc. Genetics plays a huge role in determining how much fat you hold. You may well have lucky genetics to get down to 10% bodyfat through swimming, but this does not mean that everyone else will respond in the same way.
The title should have been, ” Swimming does not work well to help you lose weight or tone and we have a misleading article with a misleading study with a bunch of theories that haven’t been proven to back it up.”
I have to agree w/ Daveyboy: If I were going to start some kind of exercise program and read this article, I would never swim. I haven’t had a problem w/increase in appetite as I drink water thru my sets and use a nice hot shower afterward-sometimes I can use a sauna depending on where I am swimming. I have lost 23 lbs in 3 months using a healthy diet-lots of fruit and veggies and little white flour or sugar.
It seems that this article is a little misleading to say the least. We shall tidy it up and highlight more the benefits for swimming and less the fact that swimming is not the best form of exercise for weight loss.
Last summer we went on a vacation to Hawaii for two weeks. We swam in the large hotel pool for about an hour a day, and also swam in the ocean most days. On our two week vacation I lost 12 pounds, from swimming! My pants and shorts that I had packed wouldn’t even stay up on me by the time I left. That’s my personal experience from swimming on a regular basis. I wasn’t even trying to lose weight.I’m a 50 year old woman, by the way.
I had a really hard time losing the baby weight after my second child. I was holding on to and extra 10-15lbs for almost a year. I took up swimming and steadily, without changing anything else, I lost that weight. While I do eat healthily, I also did throughout the year that I didn’t lost the baby weight. I try to swim 4-6 times a week and try to do at least 1km each workout. I don’t know about the results of this study, but from my experience swimming is a great weight loss AND toning activity.
The study did not say that swimming did not help people to lose weight, just that compared with other forms of exercise, it is not the best way to lose weight. Many professional swimmers do “dry training” to help reduce and burn body fat. But swimming has many advantages over other forms of exercise, mainly concerning the fact that there is less pressure places on joints and it causes less injury.