Saturday, December 27, 2008

Swimming Is One Of The Best Workouts You Can Get

Remember when you were young and you couldn’t wait until summer to go swimming and play in the water? Hopefully you learned how to swim when you were a child but if you didn’t, it is never too late to learn. Swimming is not only the best, proven exercise that you can do but also the psychological benefits of swimming can be very fulfilling. Many medical studies have proven this to be a fact for your health and it is also a lot of fun as well.

Swimming builds muscle strength and also builds your physical stamina. Everyone is aware that water has resistance and provides your body with support to make exercise easier. This is very beneficial to elderly people as well as people who suffer from muscular or joint ailments. Always check with your doctor before starting a new exercise regime if you have any physical problems or not. Swimming can also produce great results for your cardiovascular system.

Remember to always start out slow and build up as your body adjusts to the demands of swimming. You can begin with a hand over hand swim and then work up the breaststroke and more demanding forms of swimming. As mentioned before telling your doctor about your new regime is a wise step to take. You may want to consider getting into harder workouts over time such as water aerobics, which is great for your arm and thigh muscles. It’s also good for increasing your heart rate.

Make a flexible schedule that you can live with easily. 30 minutes, when first beginning, will insure that you get the maximum benefit of your workout. It is actually better to swim in shorter blocks of time, according to medical studies and will help you not to become bored with your routine.

An important thing to think is about your swimming technique, do you really know how to swim properly? Take the time to learn. Learn correctly how to do the different styles of swimming such as the breaststroke or backstroke. This will increase the benefits of your swimming workout overall. Get into some kind of routine, flowing from one style of swimming to another, make your workout as varied as you can to keep your interest. Find what works for you and remember to include easy routines as well as more difficult ones. Just keep swimming and don’t make any excuses and find the times that are right for you.

If you can use them, in the pool that you have available, think about wearing flippers. They provide extra resistance and naturally teach your body the correct way to swim with your head lower in the water and your feet and legs higher. If your not doing it correctly then you are wasting a lot of time and energy in the pool without getting all the benefits you want. Another thing you need to be aware of is the importance of wearing the correct swimwear, yes you actually have to get in a bathing suit. That’s enough to put most people off but don’t let it discourage you, you are there to exercise and one day soon you will look better and feel better about it as time goes on.

The point is to get out there and do it, even if you have never learned to swim, just remember that it is the best exercise in the world for you and splashing around in the water is always fun. Soon you will feel better and look better, take a friend along with you and share in the fun.

By: James Davis

Swimming With Dolphins In Florida

If you want to swim with bottlenose and spotted dolphins, both trained and wild, the Florida coast is an ideal destination. Bottlenose and spotted dolphins are the most gentle and intelligent mammals next to humans and even more when you meet them. You'll be able to swim with dolphins when you visit them in the Florida, Key Largo, Key West area, and Miami, Fort Lauderdale area.

You can choose from shallow-water swimming experiences with trained dolphins and deep-water encounters with wild dolphins. In shallow water enclave, you can spend time working with a trainer from a platform, as the dolphins perform tricks on command. You can also swim with the dolphins, as they will do toe pushes and body rubs. You can enjoy dorsal fin rides and snorkel with them.

Once the trained dolphin swim in captivity gives you an understanding how the dolphins behave in a controlled environment, you can go for wild dolphin encounter. You will need to go out in the sea in a boat with an experienced guide and boat captain, to find pods of wild bottlenose dolphins.

There are several facilities in Florida that offer the opportunity to swim with dolphins, both trained and wild. One such facility is Dolphins Plus, a dolphin research and education facility located south of Miami in Key Largo. Dolphins Plus houses 14 Atlantic bottlenose dolphins.

In the Florida Keys, there are three legally registered facilities that offer you the opportunity to swim and interact with dolphins – Theatre of the Sea, Dolphin Plus, and Dolphin Research Center.

There are structured and non-structured swims with the dolphins programs. In the structured program one can have an up front and personal dolphin experience. You can swim, dance, kiss, and enjoy a dorsal tow with the dolphins. In this swim, contact is guaranteed with the dolphins.

Pregnant women are not allowed in the water.

The non-structured swim is only meant for snorkelers who are comfortable in deep water. Since the dolphins in these sessions are not trained, contact cannot be guaranteed. The dolphins set the pace, and contact is up to them.

By: Thomas Morva

Why I Want A Swimming Pool

So you want a swimming pool. I know I do but that’s because my body is getting flabbier as I get older and I want a pool for 2 reasons. I hope by exercising in a swimming pool it will tone my muscles, help me loose some of my flab and make me fitter and the other reason is I don’t want to scare people when I use a shared pool. When I’m in a public swimming pool people think there’s a whale loose in it when it’s only me. Oh dear, I think I need to diet as well.

I spent last summer vacationing in Europe. I started in London – it rained, travelled through France and stayed in an old converted remote farmhouse with its own pool and then travelled down through Spain to the Costa del Sol where I then spent 3 weeks in a villa high in the Andalusian mountains with stunning sea and mountain views and of course its own swimming pool. Both pools were unique and were self-builds. The swimming pool in Spain had been built by the villa owner, a great guy called John, who was an ex pat builder from London. The swimming pool he had built was 25 ft by 32 ft. It wasn’t square, the floor wasn’t level, the tiling wasn’t level, the slope of the floor wasn’t even, and you know, it was the best swimming pool I’ve ever been in. It was great.

I had travelled to Spain to see the area as its somewhere I had always wanted to visit on a vacation and do you know, I need to go back as I didn’t see a great deal of it. I spent most of the 3 weeks I was there in the pool. The swimming pool had what they call in England, rustic charm. The sides were not straight, the floor tiles were slightly uneven and the floor sloped ever so slightly from side to side but taken with the converted stables, now a villa, and the country setting it worked and worked very well. It was the best swimming pool I’ve ever been in. If I was building a swimming pool this is how I would build it. However, a swimming pool like this would not work with a new build house, it just wouldn’t suit it.

Take the swimming pool in France. This was much more of a modern pool but again was in a countryside setting so a really formal new swimming pool wouldn’t work and I’m pleased to say that this wasn’t a formal swimming pool although at least everything was straight like the sides of the pool. Again, the design was something I had never seen before. The swimming pool sloped down from the shallow end but at a certain point, the deep part fell away on all 4 sides to become 12 ft deep. However, it had an underwater ledge about 3 ft below the surface all the way round the pool. It was great for chasing the kids round the pool, or for them chasing me, and we had a fantastic holiday with 2 fantastic pools.

The trouble was though that although I had a very long vacation, I didn’t see a great deal of France or Spain except when we were travelling. The reason, well I’m sure you can guess. If not here’s a clue. I had 2 fantastic swimming pools. I am sure I can describe the swimming pools better than the countryside local to where I stayed. I’ll have to go back next year and try again but I know I’ll be distracted by the swimming pools when choosing somewhere to stay. Then again I could try a mountain cabin with a lake to swim in. That’s something I’ve always thought would be fun. It’s a tough choice, lake or swimming pool. Maybe I can try both or better still perhaps its time I built my own swimming pool at home.

By: Ric Wiley

Swimming Pool Safety You Need to Know If You Have a Swimming Pool

In anticipation of the warm summer weather and summer holidays many people dream of spending their days by the pool. Whether you have a large in-ground or above ground pool, or simply a small inflatable swimming pool, floating in the cooling water is a relief on those hot summer days. But there are some precautions you should take to ensure that the time you and your family spend in and around the swimming pool are safe as well as fun.

Do you have a swimming pool in your backyard? Then you need to know about swimming pool safety, especially if you have kids. There are many ways that something bad can happen in and around a pool if you don’t know pool safety. So, you will want to make sure that you learn all you can about being safe around a pool to make sure nothing happens to anyone at your home.

Here are some swimming pool safety tips that will help you to start learning about pool safety.

One: You always need to make sure that if there are kids around the pool, that there is an adult around who knows how to swim to watch them. Don’t ever leave kids around pools unsupervised. If you do run into trouble knowing CPR could help save someone's life. Contact your city or local Saint John’s ambulance for CPR course.

Two: When you have an underground pool you want to have a fence around it with a gate that will lock. This will help keep kids out if an adult can’t be there to supervise.

Three: It is always a good idea even when you have a fence around your pool to add an alarm. This will tell you when someone has gone through the gate when they are not supposed to. So, if you have kids and the alarm sounds you can be there in a hurry to stop anything from happening.

Four: Don’t allow alcohol around your swimming pool. This is one of the swimming pool safety rules that a lot of adults don’t think about, especially if there are no kids around. Alcohol can alter a person’s perception, which can be dangerous for the person who has consumed the alcohol but especially if there are kids around. You just need to remember that alcohol and swimming just doesn’t mix, so don’t do it.

Five: When you have an above ground swimming pool you want to remove the steps or ladder when the pool is not in use. This swimming pool safety tip is very important because kids are very curious and will always climb stairs or a ladder when they see one. So, you have to remember to remove the way into the pool each time after you use your pool.

These are all very important swimming pool safety tips that you need to know but they are not the only ones. You need to take time to learn as much as you can about pool safety. This is the only way to make sure you know how to keep kids and adults safe when they are around your pool.

By: Mike Clarke