Swimming Workouts for Beginners

For a healthy living, along with a balanced diet, exercises also form an important part of our lives. Be it weight loss, coming into shape, muscle-building, improving endurance, or the likes, there are several exercise programs that help us in achieving our goals in the planned time frame. One such exercise, which seems to be forgotten in the course of our hectic lives, is swimming. Swimming is one complete exercise that holds an equal potential for weight loss, improving endurance, and many more physical benefits. One can maintain overall fitness with swimming. Many people are not aware about this fact. Whether you are looking for that perfect workout, or are interested in simply becoming a good swimmer, swimming workouts are what you should be doing. However, as beginners, often many people make the mistake of not following a proper workout, and think that swimming anyhow would benefit them anyway. Workouts are certainly important, as adhering to and performing a fixed workout not only helps in fulfilling the purpose of staying fit and healthy, but also helps in becoming an expert at swimming. For this reason, here are some swimming workouts for beginners, which are simply ideal for this cause. Before we have a look at some beneficial swimming workouts, let us check out some important tips regarding swimming. These tips, besides being helpful for overall reasons, will also be extremely beneficial in relation to the workouts.

Swimming Tips for Beginners

• Do not get over ambitious and over exert yourself by swimming fast and for a long time at a stretch. This would make you tired and you might lose interest in the activity. See that you swim for only 15 - 20 minutes in the beginning.
• Increase the speed and time slowly. This would stimulate a gradual increase in your stamina and endurance levels.
• Even after spending a considerable amount of time in the activity, you might feel a bit stressed-out sometimes. Well, there's nothing to worry about. All you have to do is reduce the stroke intensity and rest sufficiently after every lap.
• Swimming techniques are developed in such a way that you can tone up different parts of your body with different styles. If you are looking to tone your belly, legs and hips, then kickboards are the best choice. If your goal is to perform a high-intensity workout, then freestyle or crawl would be better options.
• Stretch your body well while swimming. This will release the stress off your muscles.
• Stamina is the most important part in any swimming workout. Therefore, to maintain stamina, avoid kicking the water too hard. Swimming can be an exercise as well as a fun experience. Breathe in between the workouts. This practice will also relax your body.
• Rolling is another important practice. If you have stretched your left arm, see that your left side is at a lower level than the right one.
• Always keep your head tilted in the front. Make sure that while swimming, your head position is such that the water level reaches only till your hairline.

Beginner Swim Workouts

Following the above said tips would definitely help you in your swimming endeavors. So now, here are some swimming workouts for beginners, where you can utilize all the tips. Remember, as an absolute beginner, do the first workout, which is less in duration and distance. As you gain expertise, move on to the longer ones.

Swimming Workout # 1
500 Meter Workout
	Perform a 100 meter warm up session. You can change the swimming style after 50 meters.
	The warm up should be followed by the actual workout consisting of 3 sets of 50 (referred to as 3 x 50) meters each, freestyle, with 10 seconds rest in between.
	Then you need to do a 3 x 50 meters, kick with a board. Here too take 10 seconds rest in between.
	At the end, do a 100 meter freestyle with a high body position and good kick.

Swimming Workout # 2
1000 Meter Workout
	Perform a 250 meter warm up session. You can change the swimming style after every 50 meters.
	The warm up should be followed by the actual workout consisting of 5 sets of 50 meters each, freestyle, with 10 seconds rest in between.
	Then you need to do a 5 x 50 meters, kick with a board. Here too take 10 seconds rest in between.
	At the end, do a 250 meter freestyle with a high body position and good kick.

Swimming Workout # 3
1500 Meter Workout
	Start the warm up session by doing 300 meters, distributing 300 meters into 100 meters freestyle, 100 meters kick, and 100 meters backstroke.
	Then do 2 split sets of 500 meters each. Each set should be split - 100 meters, 2 x 75 meters, 3 x 50 meters, and 4 x 25 meters.
	End this workout with a 200 meter swim.

Swimming Workout # 4
2000 Meter Workout
	Start with a warm up session of 500 meters free stroke.
	Then comes the actual workout of 5 x 100 meters, with a rest of around 20 seconds between each set.
	Next, perform 5 x 75 meters, with a 15 - 20 seconds rest in between each set.
	Then do a 5 x 50 meters, with 10 seconds rest in between.
	Finally, complete 5 x 25 meters, with just 5 seconds rest in between.
	End the workout with a backstroke of 5 x 50 meters.

Swimming is no doubt an excellent exercise. However, now with the aforementioned swimming workouts for beginners known to you, you can utilize the potential of swimming to the fullest and achieve your goals in a planned manner.