Why should we swim?
Why is it recommendable to swim?
Many people say swimming is the healthiest sport for both children and adults.
Doctors, Hydro-Therapists and Physical-Therapists recommend swimming, and the question is why?
There are many more reasons swimming is so highly recommended, but this article we will discuss the six most important ones: 1. Survival, 2. Hydrostatic pressure, 3. Elasticity, 4. “The Joker”, 5. Weightlessness, 6. Shock absorber.
Let’s start with Shock Absorber (and end with it too).
Imagine a car without shock absorbance. Have you ever ridden in one? Let me describe the feeling to you – You can feel every little rock or bump in the road in every part of your body with a terrible noise that gets into your bones. Now thing what would happen if our bodies didn’t have shock absorbents, and every step we took caused such a bad shock that we would lay in bed and not move.
Living brings pressure and stress and we, as living, breathing human beings, must relieve that pressure by building a shock absorbent system. How swimming, and especially WEST swimming technique allows us to do just that – we’ll learn at the end of this article.
- Survival – Knowing how to swim is no luxury. We all get to spend time by the pool or on the beach, and if a child or even an adult can’t swim, their stress will grow. Unfortunately, we hear of many cases of drowning, in the sea or in swimming pools, and to prevent such cases we should be prepared and assume responsibility.
- Hydrostatic Pressure – Hydrostatic Pressure is the water pressure on the body, which has two great advantages – pressure on the lungs improves our breathing, treats Asthma and allows more Oxygen to get into the body, and in this can help concentration even for children with ADHD, and muscle relaxation and relieving stress through using the correct angles of the body.
- Elasticity – Elasticity is important to children for keeping balance, standing, jumping and pretty much every motoric work. For adults over 18 elasticity is even more important, since a more elastic gait helps us get les tired and prevent injuries to the skeleton, the knees and the ankles, working on your WEST swimming technique will elongate your muscles.
- “The Joker” – This is what we call swimming in the sport world, because swimming is good for everything, but not the other way around. Let me give you an example: A marathon runner may think that swimming will be easy for him, but he will find out that he is gasping for air and can barely keep his legs afloat. Despite his aerobic capabilities his short muscles will use up all the Oxygen and he will feel breathless. On the other hand, the swimmer who will want to run a marathon will be able to do so in a short period of time and even beat most triathletes who come to the different tournaments without injuries. The long muscle can do the short muscle work, but the short muscle can’t do a long muscle work without first working on it for a very long time, sometimes years.
- Weightlessness – Try to imagine how much fun it could be to get stronger without putting any pressure on the joints, especially when it comes to people with back pain, pregnant women, people after hip replacement or any other surgery or even just practicing an interval workout (speed workouts that can put great pressure on the joints). Instead of those you can jog in the water, strengthen the body, release the joint, decrease stress and relax the muscle instead of doing damage.
- Shock absorber – The Shock absorber is created through working on elongating muscles while fitting the style to the exact body type, like Water-World coaches do in the WEST swimming technique. The goal is to challenge the body almost to the edge.
So how do we create the Shock absorber? It’s created by stretching the upper body, which is meant to stabilize the body, much like the chassis in a car, on the one hand, and on the other hand rocking the lower body, until we get to such a condition that even if we deal with hard, traumatic events, we can cope.
How does this relate to children? In the past it was said that children have no stress or difficulties in their lives. The mad, technological and virtual world we live in today has introduced a lot of stress into children’s lives, and they must relieve that stress and relax their body just like adults.
In conclusion, we must all preserve our bodies and nourish them, relieve stress and essentially create our own Shock Absorbent for life, because life is amazing and dynamic, but part of our learning is through failures and hardship, and this is why we should build up our bodies and souls so they can relieve stress. This way we can be prepared for everything that comes our way, and if we can – do it with a huge smile on our faces.
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