Swimming Burns more Calories than Running.
Swimming Burns Calories. Swimming is an aerobic exercise that mainly concentrates on the smaller muscles of the arms and the larger muscles of the legs. The more strokes you perform, the greater the variety of muscles you exercise during a swimming session.
Swimming is a lifetime sport that benefits the body and the whole person! Swimming is a healthy activity that can be continued for a lifetime, and the health benefits swimming offers for a lifetime are worth the effort it takes to get to the swimming pool. Swimming is a beneficial exercise for arthritis sufferers, overweight people, pregnant women and older individuals because it is a low-impact activity. That makes injuries much less common.
Swimming can develop a swimmer’s general strength, cardiovascular fitness and endurance. Why do you swim? Swimming can help you. Kicking workouts, water aerobics, pool running, or a regular swimming workout can all give you a great exercise session without the weight of your body pounding you with each move.
Swimming with increasing effort to gradually increase your heart rate and stimulate your muscle activity is easily accomplished in the water. After a land workout, swimming a few laps can help you cool-down, move blood through your muscles to help them recover, and help you relax as you glide through the water.
Spending time in a group workout, whether water aerobics or a master’s swim practice, is a great social outlet. Relax and swim with a very low effort. Many swimmers find an in-direct benefit form swimming.
Swimming Burns more Calories than Running.
Most people think that running is a crucial part of an exercise plan that’s designed to help someone lose weight. Believe it or not, a good swimming workout almost always burns more calories than running does. It should be noted that this depends on how fast you run versus how fast you swim and it also varies by the stroke that you use when swimming.
Personally, I don’t like to run. I’ve never felt pleased with myself after pushing my body to run. Because I prefer swimming to running, I was pleased to find out that a quality swimming workout actually burns more calories than running does. Of course, there are some drawbacks to using swimming instead of running as your main form of weight loss exercise.
Unless you’re really averse to running in various climates, you can step outside anywhere and start to run. Running can be done on vacation and around the neighborhood. There are a lot of running benefits as well as a lot of swimming benefits. A good swimming workout may burn more calories but running also gets your heart rate going and will help you to lose weight.
Your swimming calories and running calories can both be calculated there. Keep in mind that varied swimming strokes will alter the amount of calories that you burn, with back stroke swimming being the best way to burn calories quickly.
Cold Water Swimming
The typical temperature range for a swimming pool is between 25.5 and 27.8 degrees Celsius. Swimming in cold water makes it more difficult. Your body works harder to keep its temperature 98.6 F. Thermo-regulation requires an increase in calories burned. Reactions such as shivering will also increase the speed of your metabolism.
Swimming Calories Burned
You burn nine calories per minute swimming if you weigh 140 lbs. so you burn 9 X 32, or 288 calories swimming one mile. Swimming for an hour burns about 511 calories for a swimmer that weighs 160 lbs., states MayoClinic.com. If you weigh 200 lbs., you’ll burn 637 calories swimming for the same amount of time.
If you weigh 180 lbs. you burn 11.6 calories per minute and 11.6 X 32, or approximately 371 calories per mile. The calories burned vary according to your exact weight and speed in the pool. Most recreational swimmers won’t swim 120 laps in a typical one-hour workout, but elite masters swimmers often swim this amount in this time frame.
The men burned a similar number of calories in the cold and neutral water conditions, averaging 505 and 517 calories, respectively. However, calorie intake after exercise in the cold water averaged 877 calories, which was 44% more than for the neutral temperature.
However, many swimmers do not swim that quickly, and many cannot swim for that distance or duration, so swimming for weight reduction is not always the best plan.
Swimming Efficiency
If you don’t have good swimming technique that helps you glide along the pool, there is a silver lining. When you have a less-efficient swim stroke, you actually use more energy to move through the water, which increases your calorie burn during the time you are able to slog along, say Paul Goldberg and Matt Fitzgerald, authors of “The Lean Look.” For example, if you don’t attain proper body rotation with each swim stroke, you create more drag, which makes you work harder. Kicking too hard also creates drag.
Swimming in cold water stimulates your appetite so that you want to eat more.
Many people feel extremely hungry after they’ve been swimming, especially if the water is cold. As a result they simply replace all the calories they’ve burned with a large post-exercise meal, completely wiping out any potential weight loss benefits of the swimming.
Researchers think that leptin and ghrelin, two hormones that play an important role in controlling your appetite, are to blame. There is a tendency for lower levels of circulating leptin, together with higher active ghrelin, after immersion in cold and neutral water, respectively. Its true, Swimming Burns Calories.
References
- Gwinup, G. (1987). Weight loss without dietary restriction: Efficacy of different forms of aerobic exercise. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 15, 275-279
- Jang, K.T., Flynn, M.G., Costill, D.L., Kirwan, J.P., Houmard, J.A., Mitchell, J.B., & D’Acquisto, L.J. (1987). Energy balance in competitive swimmers and runners. Journal of Swimming Research, 3, 19-23
- White, L.J., Dressendorfer, R.H., Holland, E., McCoy, S.C., & Ferguson, M.A. (2005). Increased caloric intake soon after exercise in cold water. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 15, 38-47
- Schuenke, M.D., Mikat, R.P., & McBride, J.M. (2002). Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 86, 411-417
- Gappmaier, E., Lake, W., Nelson, A.G., & Fisher, A.G. (2006). Aerobic exercise in water versus walking on land: effects on indices of fat reduction and weight loss of obese women. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 46, 564-569
- Zeyl A, Stocks JM, Taylor NA, Jenkins AB. (2004). Interactions between temperature and human leptin physiology in vivo and in vitro. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 92, 571–578
