Five Surprising Psychological Benefits of Swimming
Swimming helps you exercise your arms, back, and legs. Basically, it’s great for your whole body. However, there are also some psychological benefits of swimming that you’re probably not aware of.
Exercising has many physical and psychological benefits. However, each sport has its own specific advantages. In this article, you’ll discover the psychological benefits of swimming.
The Psychological Benefits of Swimming
1. It Helps Eliminate Stress
One of the psychological benefits of swimming is that it eliminates stress. People live really hectic lives nowadays, which is why it’s very important to know how to relieve your stress so it doesn’t affect your health.
Swimming helps relieve stress because it’s relaxing to be in contact with water and its nice temperature. You should swim in pools where the water isn’t too cold, as this will ensure you’re comfortable.
You can swim in the mornings to start your day in a much more active way or in the evenings after work to help you relax and enjoy a more restful sleep.
This article may also interest you: How to Swim in the Ocean
2. It Boosts Your Self-confidence
The second psychological benefit of swimming is that it helps boost your self-confidence, something that will help you in all areas of your life.
When you first start swimming, you’ll probably do the front crawl. However, you’ll gradually gain confidence to try different strokes and at different speeds. This will help increase your self-confidence both inside and outside of the pool.
Self-confidence allows you to face your fears. If you don’t have a lot of self-confidence, your fears can take over and urge you to seek refuge in your comfort zone.
3. It Can Be a Social Practice
If you take a swimming classes, you’ll meet a lot of people like you, which will help you overcome your fears. This is very important if you’re a shy person.
Although you may believe you’ll have a hard time making friends or meeting new people, it’ll be easier than you think, especially with a shared activity. Remember that you already have something in common with those people. Therefore, swimming can be a perfect conversation starter.
Being shy doesn’t mean you have to hide from others. You can manage your shyness by coming out of your comfort zone!
4. It Improves Your Decision Making
The fourth of the psychological benefits of swimming is that it improves your decision making. Swimming allows you to balance your emotions to see things more clearly.
In addition, as we mentioned above, swimming helps you build self-confidence, which is something indispensable when it comes to making better decisions.
Take a look at this article: Psychological Benefits of Physical Exercise
5. It Improves Your Self-image
How do you see yourself?
Swimming will allow you to reconcile with your body if you consider that you have defects or don’t like certain parts of your body. In addition, swimming helps tone your body and make it more athletic. This can also improve your self-esteem.
Did you know all of these psychological benefits of swimming?
Swimming is a very complete sport. As you’ve seen, it helps you both physically and psychologically.
Also, once you’ve mastered some of the most basic swimming strokes, you can practice them even when you go to the beach. This way, you can work out while you’re on vacation.
So what are you waiting for? Start swimming today!
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Maglione, J. (2008). Manual natación para todos – natación para la vida. FEDERACION INTERNACIONAL DE NATACION.
- Quichimbo, G. (2016). La Psicomotricidad Influye en el desarrollo de la Tecnica de los Estilos de Natacion. Unidad Academica de Ciencias Sociales. https://doi.org/file:///C:/Users/DIABLO/Desktop/ECUACS%20DE00022.pdf
- Ramírez, W., Vinaccia, S., & Gustavo, R. S. (2004). EL IMPACTO DE LA ACTIVIDAD FÍSICA Y EL DEPORTE SOBRE LA SALUD, LA COGNICIÓN, LA SOCIALIZACIÓN Y EL RENDIMIENTO ACADÉMICO: UNA REVISIÓN TEÓRICA. Revista de Estudios Sociales. https://doi.org/10.7440/res18.2004.06
