The list of benefits of swimming at any level would make anyone who has ever swam a yard in their life feel better about themselves. From low impact to high calorie burner, swimming changes lives. Getting in shape is the main benefit for swimming, but at the high school and college level swimming also means finding some of your best friends, learning time management, and realizing what it takes to fuel your body.
When people become teammates it means that they are not just friends but you also share something that is important to both of you. Swimming is seen as an individual sport, when you are in the water you are not talking to each other you are just swimming. Along with that, you are also racing your team mates. This leads to competition, making swimming a seem very individual. Even though this is true, everyone on that team shares the same goal, win. Finishing a meet with a trophy means more to anyone than any individual. It is as simple as that, no matter who beats who, the team bonding over winning makes swimming a team sport.
The first day of high school is a huge wake up call, what is the first thing that we learn? Time management. Balancing at least seven classes along with extracurricular activities is one of the biggest obstacles in a teenagers life. No student enrolled in high school right now would deny that, even if the extracurricular activity part is slim. The majority of high school swimmers train around 20 hours a week. For many schools this involves practicing two times a day. Once in the morning at 5:30 and once after practice. With a full school day and two practices, a swimmer learns to manage their time. By the middle of the season, even though everyone is constantly tired, no one wastes time on homework and everyone understands why weekends are your best friend.
How do you fuel your body? Most adults would say eating 2,000 calories a day that includes every part of the food pyramid in moderation. All that mumble jumble gets lost in most athletes, especially swimmers. Swimming burns about 800 calories for every hour that you swim. This is on top of the amount of calories your body burns naturally a day. Making up between 4,000 and 5,000 calories a day is difficult. On top of that, athletes' bodies crave protein. If an athlete becomes protein deficient then slow recovery time starts happening. Because of this, swimmers worry more about how their bodies feel with certain foods rather than the calories because they know that in the end, calorie intake is less of a problem.
One other really important matter that comes to swimming, low impact. This is one of the benefits in swimming that does not occur in many other sports. Of course, any athlete can get injured and swimmers are well known for their shoulder injuries, but the all around low impact of swimming is impeccable. For anyone that wants to burn a couple of calories and is more of a recreational swimmer will not have to worry about busting a knee or breaking a bone because of swimming. This causes many older people to enjoy the sport, even retired swimmers come back to swimming because they have trained their bodies for so long to the low impact of the sport they they can not go back now.
Swimming is great for your body, mind, and social life. Learning each of these aspects helps anyone in their life, no matter how old. Swimming is a sport that you can participate in no matter how old you are. Making yourself jump in the freezing cold water is the hardest part.