Why should we combine swimming with other sports?
This article will discuss swimming as a kind of “Joker” card, something which can be added to any other sport and even balance it. It will give a number of example regarding children, and no less important – adults. It will demonstrate what the combination of swimming with other sports can do to our bodies and our minds, and to or lives in general, through examples from Israel and abroad, mainly rehabilitation after injuries.
This article will not discuss turning a child or an adult into a swimmer, but the importance of integrating swimming into our lives as a balancer.
Children
Kids are energetic, and we want to encourage them to run and jump. We also want to encourage them to leave the tv or computer screen. For most families, this is a daily struggle. Instead of fighting over it, we should find an easy balance and a way to let them clear their minds a little through aerobic sports.
A faster recuperation
Children are active by nature, but when the body gets tired it starts to be less accurate. For example, a child who plays basketball and after some time can’t make the shots anymore. He doesn’t understand why, can get angry, frustrated and even quit playing for good.
Combining swimming creates elasticity of the foot and elongates the muscles. When the muscles are longer landing is softened, the body tires more slowly and recuperation happens much more quickly. A long muscle is less vulnerable, especially when jumping or running.
Sitting in front of screens
Sitting for long hours in front of a computer screen is one of the hardest phenomena humanity has to deal with, from a physical perspective, and still doesn’t know how. Children are sitting for long hours in a hunched position and develop neck and lower back pains that once were typical to older people.
It’s obvious that a sport like soccer will move the body and release some of the cramps, but combining swimming with it will cause a balance that will oppose that unhealthy hunch. The elasticity swimming will induce all along the spine will keep the muscles away from the vertebrae and thus prevent almost all pain caused by long hours in front of the screen.
Physical injuries
A boy came to me after breaking his leg playing basketball. He knew how to swim WEST before he started playing basketball, and that was lucky for him. His rehabilitation process was brief, and although he nearly shattered his tibia, one month after his cast was removed, he returned to playing.
The rehabilitation process for a child who can’t swim can be three times as much.
It’s important to note that swimming, combined with other sports, can prevent elbow dislocations, unnecessary falls and other injuries. Children who combine swimming with other sports hardly ever get injured, and we will hardly see bone breaks or fractures in them.
Building coordination for the future
It is said that a child coordination can be developed until age 12, and in fact after that age it can only improve slightly, and so, no matter what kind of sport the child prefer, if swimming is combined with it the child will develop coordination skills through different swimming drills that will make him or her better at things like controlling a ball or other complex movements that require coordination. Mastering all 4 swimming styles will give the child a rare physical control for whatever he or she chooses to practice in the future. Building the skeleton correctly through swimming will enhance all other sports.
Adults
A sport for life
When they are young, some people play squash or basketball. But there comes an age when they can’t play their favorite sport, no matter how fun it is, because of compression in the spinal vertebrae that causes pressure in the spine, and so those people turn to swimming after suffering erosion the hip cartilage, a narrowing of the canal or other pains that make them need rehabilitation. The worse the damage, the longer the rehabilitation process.
Once we have the “WEST card”, tailored exactly to our body, we can swim every time we encounter pain, balance the body and return to practicing our favorite sport. Swimming WEST is that wild card you can pull whenever you need. It’s something you can start at any age and continue doing your whole life, changing your muscle built in accordance with your body type, and maintaining your neck and lower back.
Triathlon
If you’re a swimmer, and you decide, one summer’s day, to become a triathlete, you can do your first triathlon within 3 months, but if a marathon runner wants to become a swimmer, it can take him up to 6 months because of the need to elongate the muscles, the work he’ll have to put into it and his frustration over it.
A swimmer who wants to start riding or running can do it quite easily (most people) and if he feels a strain he can combine a short swimming practice after to prevent injury and promote muscle elasticity.
Rehabilitation after injury
Thousands of people every month get to Water World and WEST swimming technique in general due to a meniscus tear, a broken clavicle, paresthesia in the hands from pressure to the neck etc.
Through swimming WEST they can overcome these conditions without spending time or money on treatments and rehabilitation.
In conclusion
There are plenty of reasons to combine swimming with other sports, but the most important one is to prepare the body for that bad day when we’re at the top of our game, we get injured and we can’t go back to playing, of for the day when we lift something and our back gives out.
Swimming, and especially WEST swimming, will enable you and your children to live a healthier, more elastic lives, with less injuries. It well help you deal better with today’s crazy every day life.
