Swimming and other pool exercises can provide a workout for your entire body. However, swimming forces you to use your arms as few other sports and types of exercise do. There are a variety of ways that you can exercise your arms in the pool. If you don't know how to swim, you should take lessons before you try to swim. In addition, you should never swim alone.
Benefits
Swimming provides a cardiovascular and strength training workout. No matter what type of exercise you do in the pool, you will raise your heart rate. Raising your heart rate will help improve your physical condition. The more you swim the easier it will become. This is due to the heart pumping oxygen to the muscles more efficiently. In order to keep getting a good workout, you will need to increase your intensity or the amount of time you swim. Increasing intensity can be done easily by swimming faster during your workout.
Freestyle and Backstroke
Freestyle and backstroke are very similar strokes and therefore provide very similar workouts for your arms. These two strokes will work your biceps and triceps as you swim the stroke and pull through the water. In addition, these strokes will force you to use other muscles of your upper body such as your latissimus dorsi, teres major, infraspinatus, and pectoral muscles. These muscles are part of your back and underarm area. For both of these strokes, you can wear hand paddles to add surface area to your hands and make the strokes more challenging.
Butterfly
Butterfly is a very challenging stroke due to the way the body is moving. The arm motion is similar to that in freestyle except that both arms are moving through the water at the same time. This means that the arms are working harder, more frequently, and using more force. Using more force will make your muscles get stronger. Butterfly will also place more emphasis on your forearms as well as recruiting the biceps and triceps and other upper back and underarm muscles.
Breaststroke
Breaststroke is a stroke different than the other strokes. It will place more emphasis on the biceps and pectoral muscles in the chest. Also, the trapezius muscles will be more involved than with any other stroke. Breaststroke is an easier stroke for beginners to do, so if you are new to swimming this is a great way to get started and build up your strength and stamina.
Other Water Exercises
There are many other pool exercises that you can do in order to strengthen your arms. Most water aerobics classes will involve using the arms as well. You can wear webbed gloves to move your arms underwater and enhance your workout. In addition, you can do press outs on the side of the pool to work your arm and upper back muscles. For a press out, you put your hands on the side of the pool and simply press your body out of the water without using your legs. This is very challenging but similar to doing the swimming strokes and pull-ups.
References
- Georgia State University: Swimming
- "Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning;" Edited by Thomas Baechle and Roger Earle; 2008
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