Did you know that swimming helps burn more calories than walking or cycling? But, that's not all it can also help you get great looking abs...
Swimming is one of the most safe workout. People from all age groups can use swimming as a workout. However, it is the most fun activity during summers. Swimming helps to improve heart and lung health, which makes it an excellent cardio workout. At the same time it helps to improve strength and build lean muscles. With regular swimming workouts it is possible to get well-defined abdominal muscles.
Swimming to Build Abs
As mentioned above, thorough all-body exercises, like swimming, can play an effective role in toning the abdominal muscles. A great advantage of swimming is that it puts a considerable amount of tension on the respiratory system, thereby burning up almost every gram of unwanted fat in the body. Even if you swim at a leisurely pace for a few hours every day, you should be able to lose abdominal fat in a short time, but if you swim by following rigorous workouts, you can build up terrific abdominal muscles.
Warming up
All strainful activities must begin with a warm-up session. If you swim for about one hour, a warm-up session of at least 10 minutes is definitely necessary.
- The best workout to warm up your body is a 4 x 50 m session of each stroke.
- After you are done with the session, start with a 5 x 50 m to put your body into a good momentum.
- The butterfly stroke is the most effective swimming workout to develop your abs. Hence, the next set can be either a 5 x 50 m butterfly or a 10 x 50 m session of butterfly and freestyle strokes.
- If you choose the 5 x 50 m butterfly stroke, then make it a point to follow it up with a 5 x 50 m breaststroke or another set of butterfly stroke.
Stamina-inducing Workout
The next stage of your workout should be aimed at developing your endurance.
- Induct longer sets such as 5 x 100 m freestyle or 8 x 100 m medley. These sets will increase your stamina and boost your respiration considerably, thereby effectively burning the fat deposits in the abs.
- The last part of the workout should be specifically aimed at stressing your abdominal muscles. Start off by a simple 4 x 50 m of all individual strokes. Then follow it up with a 2 x 50 m set of freestyle and butterfly strokes.
- Swim the last 4 x 50 m with the strokes of your choice.
- You can also take up a more vigorous set of 4 x 50 m freestyle with 10 dips after every 50 m.
- After you are done with this workout, mildly cool down by doing a 50 m back stroke run in a gentle, relaxed manner. Cooling down is very important; if you stop the exercise at its peak, various muscles may cramp up.
Key Points
- Apart from rigorous workouts for your abs, it is necessary to have a clean and healthy diet.
- Abstaining from frequent alcohol consumption, taking in plenty of carbohydrates and proteins and eating natural works wonders.
- Unless you consume enough proteins, you won't be able to rebuild the stressed and damaged muscles.
You can get a seemingly healthy body and magnificent, taut abs by overexercising without paying any attention to your diet, but this type of muscle building is very harmful in the longer run and should not be pursued.
