How does swimming compared to running

From head to toe, swimming engages your entire body. Each competitive stroke engages different muscle groups and torches calories! Fun Fact: swimming butterfly is the most taxing movement among all sports. According to Nutristrategy. Swimming is the most popular Olympic sport and occupies 8 days of prime-time television in the first week of the games. Top athletes from the Olympics emerge as global icons and national heroes.

Swimming improves flexibility, range of motion, and functional strength in the water. This leads to improved core strength and stability in all your joints, as well as stronger muscles and enhanced motor skills. While staring at the black line can get monotonous, so can running at the same pace. If you swim with a group, the camaraderie is unbeatable. Between sets, swimmers do nothing but talk with each other. Have you ever tried to hold a conversation during a run?

No two swim workouts ever have to be the same. While some swimmers enjoy the consistency of doing the same workouts over and over, most enjoy mixing it up! The ability to change strokes, alternate energy systems and use equipment makes swimming a mentally stimulating experience. Your brain loves swimming. The extra blood and oxygen helps you become more alert, awake, and focused.

Swimming requires your mind to make neuromuscular adjustments to imbalances created from continuous movement through the water. Unlike running, swimming puts less pressure on your joints as a full-body workout. Plus, during swimming exercise, you are mostly using your lower body muscles, such as hamstrings, quadriceps and etc.

Nevertheless, unlike running, when you swim you also use your upper body muscles. You improve your upper body strength by using your arms to pull yourself through the water. Considering that you have a constant calorie intake, then 30 minutes of swimming per day will help you to lose weight.

Please note that to get a positive result from swimming exercise, as a weight loss, you should swim in high-intensity. According to the classification by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , if any workout keeps you at 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate then the exercise is considered as a moderate-intensity workout.

A high-intensity workout is an exercise that your heart rate is kept at 70 to 85 percent. If you use swimming as a high-intensity workout, like 30 minutes of intense swimming, then you can burn off calories per session. And if you lose more calories than you eat then you can lose a significant amount of weight every week.

Swimming can even help you to lose more weight than running since it takes more physical effort than running the same distance. In short, swimming is more cardiovascular workout than running and therefore you will lose more weight when you swim. Another factor helping you do more cardio when swimming is water resistance.

When you are running you feel less resistance since water resistance is stronger than the former. Plus, swimming in the pools helps you to keep the water resistance constant. However, you cannot predict the resistance in running and this impacts the number of calories that you burn when you perform the workout. Swimming can also help you to prevent you from joint pain.

Since it is a low-impact exercise, the age factor will not impact your workout. Because even older people can take swimming sessions without being at risk of hurting themselves. Running is also a great exercise for weight loss and has more potential for losing weight. More Button Icon Circle with three vertical dots. It indicates a way to see more nav menu items inside the site menu by triggering the side menu to open and close.

Rebecca Strong. Our stories are reviewed by medical professionals to ensure you get the most accurate and useful information about your health and wellness. For more information, visit our medical review board. Both running and swimming are good forms of cardiovascular exercise that can burn calories while strengthening and toning muscles. Swimming and running offer a wide range of physical, mental, and social benefits, with the main difference being that swimming is less stressful on joints.

Visit Insider's Health Reference library for more advice. Rebecca Strong is a Boston-based freelance writer covering health, nutrition, wellness, and dating and relationships. You can follow her on Twitter. Additional comments. Email optional.