By: Jennifer Koschmann, Head Coach of Riptide Swim Team at Colorado Athletic Club – Flatirons

I have a secret to tell you about swimming pools.

They really are fountains of youth! Although people generally understand that swimming is a good exercise, few realize how much training in the water can supercharge fitness gains, transform your body, improve your performance outside the pool, and even increase longevity

Big Aerobic Gains Without The Joint Pain

Water is the perfect medium for training because it provides resistance while also minimizing impact on bones and joints. Swimming laps is the ultimate low-impact aerobic exercise. If running is out of the question, and even brisk walks are uncomfortable due to pain in your feet, ankles, knees, hips or spine… then the pool may be your best option for sustained aerobic endurance exercise.

Duration is the key here. Aerobic exercise is all about accumulating time at an easy to moderate level of activity. That’s what improves cardiovascular health, increases endurance, and burns more calories per session. In the pool we can keep you moving and keep your cardiovascular system working at the moderate intensity level for a longer period of time than you might be able to sustain walking, running, or even on an elliptical or exercise bike.

Work Out Everything All At Once

Whether you’re swimming laps or participating in a deep water conditioning class, training in the pool works muscle groups throughout the entire body, enhances range of motion in joints from head to toe, improves cardiovascular conditioning, and can even be good for balance and coordination.

Core strength is one of the biggest and most underrated advantages of training in the water. Every movement in the pool activates your torso and a strong connection between your upper and lower body is essential for swimming and the exercises we do during deep water conditioning. That’s part of the reason consistent exercise in the pool can reduce lower back pain out of the pool!

The Key to Recovery

For a lot of people, exercise is an essential component of your daily schedule. That’s awesome, but it can make it challenging to balance exercise intensity with adequate rest and recovery. The pool can be a great tool for managing your training/recovery balance, allowing you to maintain your daily schedule while incorporating an activity that can be made easier on your muscles, joints, and aerobic system.

What does this look like in real life? At the Colorado Athletic Club and Sports & Wellness locations, we have members training for marathons who swim twice a week on days they don’t run because 30 minutes of easy swimming warms up their muscles and joints so they feel better when they start their runs the following day. Similarly, members who cite “routine” and “stress relief” as important reasons for exercising every day incorporate swimming or water exercise because they can accomplish their daily goal while engaging in a low-intensity, restorative activity.

Train in the water for better living on land

People want exercise to translate to our everyday activities. You lift weights so you can heft luggage or lift your kids without hurting yourself. You walk or run in the neighborhood or on the treadmill so you can go for a hike in the mountains. How does swimming help you live better when you’re out of the water?

Swimming improves coordination and balance. Because it is a coordinated, repetitive movement that simultaneously engages all four limbs and your torso, swimming helps train your brain to control your whole body. This is important at all stages of life, as swimming is viewed as a “fundamental movement skill” in childhood development (Sinclair and Roscoe, 2023) and can improve both hand-eye coordination and balance in the elderly (Hsu et al., 2010).

Swimming improves range of motion. Relieved of the burden of gravity, you move your body differently in the water. Swimming in various strokes moves your arms in circles, stretches your hands over your head, kicks your legs out to the sides, twists your torso, and much more. Where daily life on land literally presses you down and stiffens your joints, swimming opens you up and lets your joints move as freely as they did when you were a kid. And the more you swim, the better you’ll move on land!

Jump In!

Your local club is the best place to jump into aquatic training. Clubs have a variety of aquatics programs, including youth swim lessons and swim teams, training-oriented masters swim programs, private and semi-private swim instruction for adults, and deep water conditioning classes that combine cardio, strength and stretching. Find your nearest club!