Top 5 reasons to start swimming during winter

Whether you want to lose your extra kilos or keep your figure, swimming (together with a balanced diet, of course) is one of the most effective ways to achieve your goals.

Swimming is a highly energy-intensive sport. One hour of swimming at a moderate pace will burn up almost 600 calories!

But don’t be mistaken, doing a few breaststrokes is not enough. Only sustained effort and regular energy expenditure will help you to lose weight and/or slim down. So opt for regular sessions (once or twice a week) without necessarily going overboard (half to one hour), instead of long, intensive training once every three months.

How simple is that? So let’s go ahead and scorch our calories while having fun!

Had too much beer this Christmas? No worries, swimming offers you a six-pack that is 100% guaranteed against a hangover.

The good news is that all strokes will do the job. All certainly, but not in the same way. Breaststrokes will strengthen your waist line. The front crawl and back crawl, with their alternating (and therefore faster) rhythm, will melt away your “love handles” while working your obliques. The butterfly stroke is undoubtedly the best to tone the abs.

Most important: Without exerting too much effort, try to focus on your hydrodynamics by remaining streamlined, chest high out of the water while contracting the abs. You can then swim faster and work your core muscles, without tiring yourself out.

The most difficult thing to do after the Christmas holiday is to get out of your sofa and forget your delicious treats to go back to the daily grind, right?

Don't worry! A tried and tested anti-stress activity, swimming makes it easy to combine fun and an active life.

And the reason why is very clear. First, because of its repetitive nature, it produces a feeling of “letting go”, by which you can press the “PAUSE” button and forget your daily hassles for a while. Moreover, during the effort, and even more so when immersed in an aquatic environment, the body secretes endorphins (pleasure hormones) that produce a general feeling of well-being and calm.

Finally, when you swim in the evening, the effort will bring about a healthy fatigue. This will help you to sleep better and benefit from a good restful sleep, to be fully refreshed for a day of work ahead.

And because it is good for the morale, swimming must be practised without moderation!

After this busy season of culinary delights, “weight gain” is perhaps not what you were looking forward to…

Let’s try to reverse the trend and sculpt our body just the way we want! The best of the best when it comes to versatile sports, swimming will be part of our muscle-building strategy.

Swimming works on all the muscle groups of our body in a balanced and homogeneous way. Again, not all strokes produce the same benefit. So by varying the swimming exercises, you can focus on the muscles that you want to develop in particular.

Don’t forget to vary the strokes and exercises to work all the muscles of your body to sculpt it harmoniously, just as you wish!

Nothing better to awaken and tone your body than to hit the water ... Well, the same is true for muscles!

The vital advantage of swimmers is that they can make the most of the virtues and benefits of the aquatic environment. The pressure of water passing over your body produces a circulatory, massaging and draining effect on your body, that firms up the skin and smooths out cellulite.

In addition to this, the regular practice of swimming works your legs. This dislodges the accumulated fats and produces amazing results on your skin appearance and muscle tone.

So then? Convinced? Ready to make your New Year resolution to go swimming?

If not, you can dive deeper in the swimming benefits with those articles: