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Swimming 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.
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.
- 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.
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” said 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.
Related articles:
- Swimming for Fitness
- Michael Phelps – Greatest Olympic Swimmer – Workouts and Diet
- How To Teach Your Baby Swimming
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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
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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.