I used to swim far more often than I do now. Your post is motivating me to do it more often. It's always been way up there among my favorite forms of exercise. I'm no expert or anything by any means, and only swim breaststroke, nothing fancy. One thing I have noticed, and this is a good reminder for me to keep it up, is that when I stick to it, I'm often in the best shape ever. I'm not sure how much I would enjoy it if I were taking classes or anything. When I swim, I just do laps and do it for fun.
Sorry to hear about your injury. I know that it must be frustrating missing all your other workouts, but I think that you're doing great, and am happy to hear that the Essentrics and T-Tapp have helped. Swimming has so many benefits. There are a few books on it that I've enjoyed, as well as articles and studies. I've read some of them.
"The more you swim, eat right and avoid tobacco, the longer you’ll live, according to two studies of more than 355,000 people. You may add as many as 10 years to your life, according to the heart researcher who led the studies. Although the super-healthy (defined as nonsmokers who have normal blood pressure and low cholesterol levels) constituted only 10 percent of those surveyed, their results made a big impact. The death rate from heart disease was nearly 80 percent lower for these people, who were mostly middle-aged when both studies began, than it was for the rest of the group. Overall, only six to eight percent of the low-risk men died of heart attacks, compared with a heart disease death rate of nearly 30 percent in the whole group.
One study that was called “Research Swimming and All-Cause Mortality Risk Compared with Running, Walking, and Sedentary Habits in Men.” This study looked at around 40,000 men for over 30 years. In the 13-year study, 11% of the people in the sedentary group passed away, the folks who walked lost 7.8%, the runners lost 6.6%, and the most surprising statistic was the swimmers they only lost 1.9% during the study."
There are a bunch of more benefits, but I won't overwhelm you here.
Both of my parents, ages 92 and 81, swim regularly. My dad swims twice a day. My father-in-law is 80 and he swims as well.
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"Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory." - Betty Smith, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"
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