Getting Into Action With Swimming

One of my goals set for this new term was to do at least an hour of swimming every week, to build my muscular endurance and strength. The main aspiration to include swimming in my action plan was to tackle the issue of my back pain. “Studies show that aquatic exercises, including swimming, are indeed some of the most useful activities to relieve lower back pain.” (Credit ispinei). Wanting to go in the field of medicine, I often scan through the internet, reading articles (of course from reliable sources) on various health issues. And hence, the personal issue of spinal ache (possibly lumbago) catalysed my research as to how I could tackle this issue. And the promising results of activities like swimming convinced me to include it in my action plan.

So this week, I went down for a nice swim. One of the ways I am measuring my improvement is the time taken to go across one length of our pool (not the standard length). As of now, I took 39s to go across (freestyle), and I hope to improve this timing in the future.

It was rather sunny, but I practised 3 strokes today: freestyle, backstroke and breast stroke. I did not time myself for backstroke and breast stroke, because I feel like those areas need significant improvement still.

This swimming session also felt like a good refresher from studies, since I was able to take some time off, and get a breather. It significantly helped me focus more later on that day, hence proving as a positive factor in improving my study output. Furthermore, it’s an issue that is often neglected, but swimming on a sunny day meant that I was able to absorb a good amount of vitamin D. I feel like in spite of doing activities, often the vitamin D intake of people is much less (contributing to its deficiency) since they often do the activities in closed spaces (like gym). Hence, such outdoor activities (literally outdoor) are also crucial from a health point of view, and that’s what I did today.

For the future, I aim to maintain (and even increase) my weekly swimming time. Alongside, I aim to gradually reduce my timing to around 35s (freestyle) by next month. Other strokes, specially backstroke and breast stroke, are work in progress. hence, for the time being, a side goal is to also keep practising and improving in these strokes.