Benefits of swimming

Coordination

Muscle recovery

Hip and glute strength

Foot flexibility

Foot strength

Hip and glute strength

Legitimate reason to pee in a pool

Lower resting heart rate

Cardiovascular Interval training without impact

General physique enhancer

Relaxation

Mood enhancer

Wow. Awesome list! :)

ABS!!!!!!!

U don't get abs from the pool

I took a couple of swimming classes in college and found that a relatively small amount really helped my running.

I also took a couple of gymnastics classes and felt those helped too. Plus they were fun

Running takes place in the sagital plane almost exclusively. Any type of cross training that can work on general fitness and improve strength/flexibility in other planes of motion is likely to aid in running performance and or injury prevention.

-Upper body strength: mostly chest, shoulders, biceps and traps

-Increased lung capacity:

http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&itemid=5113&mid=8712

-Almost limitless capacity for hard work: once you're in basic swimming shape, you can do interval workouts twice a day, every day, and not get hurt

-Active recovery

-Improved mental toughness: you don't know boredom until you've swum a mile in a pool

-Better athleticism

Basically it just gets you shredded and makes your shoulders huge! lol

what strokes do you recommend? just freestyle? mix different ones in?

I'd suggest learning swimming as an actual sport versus crosstraining for running. This means learning all of the strokes and incorporating them into every workout along with kicking, pulling, and drill sets.

It gives you the option of working out with masters groups and putting together workouts you can do on your own. It'll also balance you out so that you are not just working the freestyle muscle group all of the time.

Swimming has saved my ass over the years by allowing me to have a sport for when i am injured that i can do with other people and do intervals.

Not drowning may be the only one.

Lets face it, brahs, swimming is about as boring as it gets. You also won't gain any significant muscle mass. You will look like Phelps, maybe. This will help you in a gay bar but not getting hawt chicks.

If you want to get BUFF and SHREDDED, CrossFit is still the way to go.

Front Crawl (Aka "Freestyle") gets you from point A to point B the fastest with the least amount of actual "work". It's good if you're racing or on a time constraint, or enjoy it. It can be a good interval stroke or a tri stroke.

If you want full body workout and coordination and to not get too bored and be able to swim long distance or in different water conditions you should learn every stroke you can.. breast stroke, what the first person who swam the English channel used, this stroke is a beauty once you get it down, it's the last stroke athletes learn since it is so hard to do the dolphin kick near the end, backstroke is good for full recovery, side stroke is good for swimming with waves or for using tired muscles since you use a nonchalant scissor kick, navy seal side/front crawl stroke combo conserves most energy they found, butterfly maybe but I have found no practical use for it, breast stroke works pecs enough, swimming while holding your breath can be great.

The main thing about swimming properly is covering the most distance with the least amount of effort, there should be a glide period in all strokes, the more powerful and efficient your stroke the more distance you can cover without getting tired

this is why swimming is such a joke of a sport. Just swim, there shouldn't be 5 different disciplines for the same distance. Imagine if running had races for left foot first starters and right foot first starters. Thats what its like.

I hate freestyle wrote:

If you want full body workout and coordination and to not get too bored and be able to swim long distance or in different water conditions you should learn every stroke you can.. breast stroke, what the first person who swam the English channel used, this stroke is a beauty once you get it down, it's the last stroke athletes learn

Breaststroke is awesome and runners like it because they can get a lot of power out of their legs with this stroke, BUT, if you happen to be in the pool due to any kind of knee injury, stay the hell away.

This threas is totally awesome bro

Xfit_guy_the_real_1 wrote:

Not drowning may be the only one.

Lets face it, brahs, swimming is about as boring as it gets. You also won't gain any significant muscle mass. You will look like Phelps, maybe. This will help you in a gay bar but not getting hawt chicks.

If you want to get BUFF and SHREDDED, CrossFit is still the way to go.

So former Miss California is not a hot chick? Whatever...

From my experience Running makes you very lean. It's tough because it makes my legs feel extremely heavy and same with my arms... it's really fun and makes you look good.

Anything else anyone want to add?

Swimming in the ocean can treat skin blemishes and give your hair some bounce.

increased subcutaneous fat, if you consider that a benefit