Swimming For Weight Loss: Exercises, Benefits, and Tips

For the perfect workout that will help you lose weight and stay active, try out swimming. In Dubai, swimming is a popular sport that people enjoy year-round. It’s a full-body exercise that uses multiple muscle groups, helps build strength, improves stamina, and burns calories. Whether you want to start alone, join a class, or even try it out with friends, swimming for weight loss is a fun way to nourish your body and stay active.

Read on for the best swimming exercises to lose weight, additional tips, and the benefits of swimming for your health.

Health Benefits of Swimming

Before we get into the best swimming exercises for weight loss, let’s tackle the health benefits of this sport:

• Eases stress on the joints (making this an ideal workout for those with weak bones, arthritis, and more).
• Strengthens the heart and lungs.
• Increases your flexibility and muscle tone.
• Improves posture.
• Reduces the risk of chronic illnesses (like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke).
• Reduces stress levels, anxiety, and depression.
• Swimming is a lifelong skill! It could help you save a life in the future.

If you ask medical professionals, more often than not, they’ll only verify the above. Swimming workouts are a great way to lose weight and improve overall health – it’s known to be one of the best cardiovascular exercises (making it most effective for fat loss).

Best Swimming Stroke for Weight Loss

Let’s start with the best swimming workouts for weight loss. There are many strokes to practise, each using different muscles and providing many benefits. Use a combination of the below strokes to ensure your whole body is worked and your muscle groups are balanced.

Here’s a quick overview of the benefits of the most common strokes, from easiest to most challenging:

Breaststroke

For beginners and less experienced swimmers, the breaststroke is ideal for you. The breaststroke is a slower and more gentle technique working the whole body. Although this isn’t the quickest calorie burner, it’s a great stroke to help build your confidence in the water. When doing the breaststroke, you should feel it most in your chest, arms, thighs, back, and legs.

Backstroke

As the name implies, the backstroke is done lying on your back while kicking your legs and propelling your arms. This stroke is ideal for those who aren’t comfortable keeping their faces underwater or find breathing while swimming difficult. This stroke strengthens your core muscles, works the major muscles in your arms and legs, and improves hip flexibility.

Front Crawl

Another great beginner’s stroke is the front crawl, the fastest and most common stroke. This beginner’s technique targets the core, hips, shoulders, back, and legs (requiring you to constantly kick and lift your arms in and out of the water while keeping your body straight). Unlike the other strokes, this one requires you to do it quickly (not rushed, make sure you’re mindful of your movements), making it highly effective for burning calories.

Butterfly

Last, but not least, is the butterfly stroke – generally considered the most effective for losing weight and toning your muscles. It’s a bit difficult to learn, but once mastered, it can significantly benefit your body, mainly the arms, chest, shoulders, and back muscles. Out of these four strokes, the butterfly requires the most energy. Short bursts of muscular power and movement are needed to perform this unusual technique when practising this style. It’s normal to become tired when performing the butterfly quickly, so incorporate this later in a swimming workout.

Regardless of what stroke or variation you do, any form of swimming is beneficial for your health. Make sure to stay mindful of your technique. With the correct technique, you’ll be swimming in the right direction!

Swimming Tips for Weight Loss

Whether you’ve already started swimming or are just about to, planning a solid exercise routine is essential. If you want to get the most out of swimming workouts for weight loss, here are some tips to get the most out of this dynamic sport:

Increase The Distance

When first starting, do lengths (aka: laps) at the pool of your choice. Make sure to gradually increase the number of lengths you swim each time, that way, you can view your progress over time. It’s also incredibly gratifying to accomplish certain milestones you set for yourself.

Sprint Training

After a while (or even when you first start), you might find swimming laps repetitive. Try to incorporate sprint sets into your exercise routine. Sprint training in swimming is especially good for fat loss, as it increases the intensity (and adds cardio). Some easy and good examples are 4 x 50m (50 metres 4 times) or 3 x 100m (100 metres 3 times) – but tweak them where appropriate to suit your ability, as it’s a lot tougher than it sounds.

Gradually Push Yourself

No matter the workout, you must up the ante to see the progress. However, increase the intensity gradually to avoid serious injuries. Make sure to increase the intensity of your workout in phases, or at least once you can breeze through your current workout. For example, if swimming four laps is easy, increase it to 6 laps. If you can do six laps of the breaststroke, change the stroke to something more challenging (butterfly, perhaps).

Maintain A Healthy Diet

Weight loss is only complete with a good and healthy diet to follow. The rule of thumb is that building a healthy body is 75% diet and 25% exercise. No matter how hard you try, you won’t lose weight if you eat unhealthily. Take a look at your eating habits and make sure it’s balanced and won’t be detrimental to your workout. 

Stay Consistent and Have Fun

Not only is consistency key, but so is enjoying the sport. Make sure to block in time every week (once to multiple times) to head to the pool and get your laps in. You can also explore different classes – whether a virtual challenge to accomplish on your own or a group class for a shift. Don’t worry; swimming for weight loss will always be exciting if you change it up (or even bring along a friend).

Swimming is more than an exercise in a pool to lose weight; it’s a beautiful way to connect to and take care of your body. Some people also find swimming to be very therapeutic. If you follow the above tips, you can ensure progress.

HUNA Aquatics at Circle Mall

Don’t wait until New Years to start, every day is a great day to begin your fitness journey! The best place swimming for weight loss in Dubai is at HUNA Aquatics, located on the roof at Circle Mall.

HUNA Aquatics is a world-class swimming academy that provides swimming for weight loss, water polo, and artistic swimming programs designed and delivered by professional coaches. A wide variety of classes are offered here for everyone, from kids to adults. Be it a beginner or the world’s next best swimmer, HUNA Aquatics ensures everyone can learn to swim and fall in love with the water.

You can find the following classes at HUNA Aquatics in Circle Mall:

• Babies Classes.
• Kids Group Classes.
• Adult Group Classes.
• Ladies Classes.
• 1 on 1 Sessions.
• Special Needs Sessions.
• Open Pool Usage.
• Family Passes.

Head over to HUNA Aquatics at Circle Mall today and kickstart your swimming for weight loss journey!