If your goals are endurance, improved mood, injury recovery, joint health, or upper-body strength, this is a must read.

According to Health Real Wellness magazine, about 40% of adults in the U.S. cant swim. If that number includes you, the Kingsport Aquatic Center offers lessons for adults and children.

Swimming is a great aerobic exercise thats also good for toning. This is because even the parts of your body that arent actively moving are supporting you against the resistance of the water.

Swimming is an excellent all-around activity because it:

Keeps your heart rate up but takes some of the impact stress off your body

Helps maintain a healthy weight, healthy heart and healthy lungs

Tones muscles and builds strength

Builds endurance, muscle strength, and cardiovascular fitness

The concepts of swimming and water activities have evolved greatly since the first written document on swimming by Nikolaus Wynmann in 1538, The Swimmer, or A Dialogue on the Art of Swimming and Joyful and Pleasant to Read.

At its inception, swimming was understood simply as moving in water first, in order to survive and then to compete. Today, the term clearly connotes swimming sports, and as such can be defined as an activity in which a person practices a regulated Olympic sport in order to move as fast as possible through the water thanks to the propulsive forces generated by arm, leg, and body movements overcoming the resistance the water presents to progress.

Swimming was part of the first modern Olympic games in 1896 in Athens. The skills of swimming have been adapted to different contexts and participants. The result is that there is now a great diversity of additional water activities: aquatic Olympic sports (water polo, diving, and synchronized swimming), non-Olympic sports and leisure activities.

The term aquatic activities covers all these plus swimming, and can be defined as motor activities performed in water for purposes that may be utilitarian, competitive, educational, therapeutic or recreational.

Detra Cleven, a master swimmer, said, I began swimming at a young age. My father wasnt into the tea parties or dolls, so he took me to the swimming pool after he got off work. I loved to splash around. However, I took some time off after college. I dabbled in the water, expanding to water aerobics, water walking, and general lap swimming. As my family, career, life happened, I would leave the water for a while and then find my way back.

Detra took swim lessons and loved it enough to start her competitive swimming journey at the age of 8 through high school and college. To this day, she still swims competitively with the Kingsport Aquatic Center Master Viperfish Team.

The downside to using swimming as an exercise is that finding space can be hard, but with the Kingsport Aquatic Center, the availability is more open in our area.

Detra expressed that she found swimming to be a place for her. With swimming being an individual sport with a team component, she loves the time to think, improve, and work on HERSELF. For Detra, swimming is both a mental and physical work in progress.

With Detras hard work and dedication, she competed in swim in the Tennessee and North Carolina area and eventually in the National Swim Meets across the U.S. This allowed her to meet and become friends with more people who love the water.

I have had success with Masters Swimming competitions, including being the national champion in the 50 butterfly and 200 individual medley.

I am also international masters champion in the 100 breaststroke, Detra added.

With that being said, Healthy Kingsport would like to ask you this question: If your doctor gave you a prescription that said it would improve your mood, improve energy, keep you mentally sharp, help you manage weight, reduce your risk of disease and injury, extend your life span, and cost little to nothing, youd probably say, Say what?

Healthy Kingsport would say, a prescription is immediately available and you dont need a doctor to write it for you. Its swimming!

Exercise Almanac is not finished. Next weeks article will discuss HIIT (high-intensity interval training): the benefits/downside and the good-to-knows.

Healthy Kingsport is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a community that actively embraces healthy living by promoting wellness, enhancing infrastructure and influencing policy. Aiesha Banks is the executive director of Healthy Kingsport. She can be reached at [emailprotected].

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Swimming is a great aerobic exercise that also promotes toning - Kingsport Times News