THE BENEFITS OF SWIMMING

Swimming is joy!   Swimming is meditative.  Swimming is healthy.  Swimming is fun!
Swimming is a non-impact sport that people can enjoy for their entire lifetime.  It strengthens math skills, develops focus, bridges youthful age gaps, promotes comradery (while encouraging personal achievement), and centers the bodies and minds of those who participate.
  

It is surprising to some, but competitive swimming strengthens math skills in two ways: 

1) Achievement in swimming is based on increasing speed and dropping time; therefore, a by-product of a swimmer's training is the development of an acute ability to perform mental math calculations that determine speed from the factors of distance and time; this ability increases as a swimmer improves (and vice versa).

2) Math calculations are not only used for calculating speed in swimming.  They are also necessary to understand the exercises called "sets" that coaches assign to swimmers.  Competitive swimmers become more and more adept at keeping track of the sums and products of fluctuating variables that comprise the "sets" they do in practice.  To fill you in, swim practices consist of repetitions of distances, named by the number of yards (or meters).  For example, an exercise might be to swim 32 x 25 yards, very fast, with a long rest after each 25, contrasting with another type of set that might be to swim 8 x 100 yards, at medium speed, with a short rest after each 100.  (Coaches design fast short distances with extra rest in order to work an athletes's anaerobic system; and longer slower distances with less rest to work their aerobic system).  Keeping track of these varying numerical instructions molds swimmers to be adept at math. 

Active children stay engaged while focussing on these numeric details as well as on the technical aspects of form in swimming.  The mother of Olympian Michael Phelps is a Middle School Principal who became an advocate for the public awareness of ADHD in children.  She indicated that swimming was a distinctive positive influence which enabled her son to develop strengths that were not compromised by symptoms associated with his ADHD diagnosis.

Competitive swimming bridges age gaps, joining older and younger children on one team.  It is one of the only sports that reaches across a broad age group arc, which includes swimmers less than 8 years of age, all the way up and through the age of 18. This model imitates a family structure and is family friendly. Typically a swim team is like an extended family that thrives in a climate of cooperation, leadership and admiration, where children of all ages support each other; the younger ones looking up to the older ones and the older ones demonstrating excellence and becoming role models for their underlings.  

Being both an individual and a team sport, competitive swimming promotes strong comradery among team-mates, who compete against other clubs for team recognition and awards.  But fundamentally, a swimmer is competing with his or her own self, trying to beat their "personal best" time.  The clock doesn't lie, and the gauge for improvement is ever reliant on the mantra "What you put into it, is what you get out of it."

Swimming is a win win situation.  While the main motive is to swim fast, there is an attainable and underlying beauty in the movement quality and physique that is gained through the rigorous training necessary to become great in the sport.  A swimmer becomes fit, engaging in a physically challenging yet meditative activity that centers the body and mind. Gratefully, there are relatively low numbers of injuries, and this activity can be enjoyed for a lifetime. This is:  the joy of swimming!