Why is swimming good for you?

1st 10 minutes

For the 1st 10 minutes, we will be working on a cardiovascular workout.

We will do this by placing a brick in the middle of a width. We will take it in turns to go front crawl, until we reach the brick, then go under water and touch the brick. Then we will swim front crawl to the other end. Then swim back using joy stroke, to the end where we started. Then our partner will follow.

What are the advantages of swimming for the cardiovascular system?

As a sport, swimming provides a great cardiovascular workout that does not produce stress on the skeletal system like aerobics or jogging. Cardiovascular exercises are most effective in improving fitness and health, cardiovascular exercise usually involves vigorous exercise sustained over a period of serial minutes, and its effect is to increase the efficiency of lungs, heart and blood circulation. Under water, the chest is under pressure from the weight of the water squeezing inwards. Every breath requires more effort from the muscles used, especially in breathing in, have to work harder. As any muscle strengthens with exercise, this improves the whole respiratory system. The heart also has to work harder in order to meet the increased demand for nutrients by all the muscles which are being worked.

What is the cardiovascular system?        

The cardiovascular system includes the heart and the blood vessels. The heart pumps blood, and the blood vessels channel and deliver it throughout the body. Arteries carry blood filled with nutrients away from the heart to all parts of the body. The blood is sometimes compared to a river, but the arteries are more like a river in reverse. Arteries are thick-walled tubes with a circular covering of yellow, elastic fibres, which contain a filling of muscle that absorbs the tremendous pressure wave of a heartbeat and slows the blood down. This pressure can be felt in the arm and wrist - it is the pulse. Eventually arteries divide into smaller arterioles and then into even smaller capillaries, the smallest of all blood vessels. One arteriole can serve a hundred capillaries. Here, in every tissue of every organ, blood's work is done when it gives up what the cells need and takes away the waste products that they don't need. Now the river comparison really does apply. Capillaries join together to form small veins, which flow into larger main veins, and these deliver deoxygenated blood back to the heart. Veins, unlike arteries, have thin, slack walls, because the blood has lost the pressure which forced it out of the heart, so the dark, reddish-blue blood which flows through the veins on its way to the lungs oozes along very slowly on its way to be reoxygenated. Back at the heart, the veins enter a special vessel, called the pulmonary arteries, into the wall at right side of the heart. It flows along the pulmonary arteries to the lungs to collect oxygen, and then back to the heart's left side to begin its journey around the body again.

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Front Crawl                                Back Stroke                        Breast Stroke 

                                 

The particular groups of muscles used in swimming vary according to the stroke you use. But using a variety of backstroke, front crawl (freestyle) and breast stroke will use all major muscle groups: abdominals, biceps and triceps, gluteals, hamstrings and quadriceps.

Adnominals                                        Biceps                 Triceps        

Hamstrings                 Quadriceps

2nd 10 minutes

For the 2nd 10 minutes, we will use equipment, and isolate arm and leg muscles. For the 1st 5 minutes, I will use the flippers, and hold the float out in front of me, with my head in the water, to make me more streamlined, in order to glide through the water quicker. This isolates my leg muscles, the Hamstrings and Quadriceps. to isolate her arm muscles, the biceps, triceps and Gluteals. She will use joy stroke in her arms. We will swim alternately, each of us doing 2 lengths at a time, after 5 minutes, we will swap over, and I will use the buoy will use the flippers and float. This will help strengthen our arm and leg muscles, which will help swimming and other sports.

Me _                                                        Jennifer

Using flippers and float                                using buoy

Isolated leg muscles                                Isolated arm muscles

Hamstrings                Quadriceps                        Biceps                Triceps