Swimming is a comprehensive and low impact form of exercise, which makes it great for people of all ages. Children can learn to swim at an early age and become confident in their abilities and familiar with water, which can provide them with valuable skills for later in life. Swimming can also be beneficial to children’s health. Below are five things children who swim can learn.
1. Teamwork
Children who join swim teams are able to experience the unique developmental benefit of learning teamwork along with the child’s sense of individuality. Children learn to work with their teammates and rely on each other to stay safe while swimming. This lets a child gain confidence at a young age, while learning how to respect and watch out for their peers.
Most team sports typically aim to develop a player's understanding of respect, trust, and cooperation, and swim teams are able to provide these same lessons. However, children who are on a swim team must also develop their own motivation and perseverance. No teammate feels supported when another does not perform their best during a relay. Swim teammates support each other and help to cheer each other on. This helps to teach children about the importance of the strength of their team rather than just themselves.
2. Motivation and Competition
At swim meets, swimmers try to beat other players as well as their personal best times. While the main motivation in this is to earn your team points, swimmers can look around them at other people's times as well as their own to act as motivation to keep improving in their sport. Swimmers can also receive a lot of motivation from the crowd and learn the benefits of support from other people, and learn to lose gracefully and win with good sportsmanship.
3. Exercise
Children often do get out a lot and participate in several activities, but swimming is healthy in particular because it uses the entire body. It provides both muscle and cardiovascular exercise. Swimming burns calories quickly and offers 12–14% more resistance training than exercise on land, which helps to offer a challenging workout. Water is hundreds of times denser than air, so it is more difficult to exercise with this resistance.
In addition to weight maintenance, teaching your child to swim at a young age will encourage them to live a healthy life moving forward. Once a child learns to swim, they will always have the ability to use that attribute to get a good workout.
4. Fun
Aside from physical and mental benefits, swimming offers the benefit of being fun and memorable. Swimming lessons create a great environment for children to make friends with each other and to have fun with a supervised sense of freedom. Swimming is a great way to keep children active during the day while making it seem more fun than a normal workout. It is also a wonderful way for them to keep cool during hot summer days.
5. Safety
The second most common cause of death from injuries of children under 14 is drowning. Many drownings and accidents occur when a child accidentally falls into water without knowing what to do. These accidents can happen at any time, with or without supervision. It is important to children to be prepared for this situation, and swimming lessons can significantly improve their safety should they fall into a pool or pond.
Swimming is an all-around great pastime for children that provides exercise, fun, and lessons. Visit a place like SwimJim Swimming Lessons and get your child started on this great hobby. Children who swim are confident and fit and often well socialized with their teammates. It is a sport that can be carried on for life, as it is not harsh on joints and can be soothing with age.
1 Comment
My daughter is just turning five and she is dying to take swimming lessons. I found it interesting that you mentioned that swimming is up to 14% more effective at resistance training. After reading this, I will definitely find a good company that my daughter can take swimming from.