No, no, no. That is a common misconception, in fact. You are not exchanging fat for muscle. You are using up fat. It’s no different from walking. You use calories of energy to do the work of moving yourself along swimming or walking. You require calories of energy in the food you eat. If they are in balance, you don’t lose or gain weight. If one is greater than the other, you are not in balance. If you expend more energy than you take in, you lose weight because some of that energy has to come from that which you have in storage, i.e. fat. If you expend less energy than you take in, you place some of your intake in storage whether you want to or not and you gain weight, as that storage system is called body fat. The type of exercise you do is immaterial. You use energy to do it, and you take that energy from the food you have eaten.
Speaking from my own experience, I have lost weight since I started swimming, and Ivylad said he noticed my legs were getting firmer. Before I was doing the stairs or the ellipses or the treadmill, but I’ve noticed that from the second I get in the pool and start swimming, my heart rate goes up. My endurance is getting better, in that I don’t have to rest after every lap anymore, and I have lost weight.
I do the breast (?) stroke, the one where you are face down in the water and swimming with your arms going over your head, turning for a breath after your arm goes over, then I do one exercise I made up myself…I lie on my back, put my arms out to my side so I make a T, and kick with my legs.
Except I think what happens, and the one cite I had kind of goes into this, people think, “well I swam for 30 minutes so that’s a good workout”. When in reality they haven’t done much. It’s a bit like me walking for 30 minutes thinking I’ve used the same amount of energy as running for the same 30 minutes. The majority of people who swim are not very efficient so they think they are running when they are walking, if that makes sense. They also said in the cite that some people tend to eat more after swimming then they do other exercises.
As for the OP, I asked around tonight at practice and everyone said they do sweat during practice. I know I was since I was looking to see if I did.
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Fhat’s called freestyle. The breaststroke is where your hands stay underwater and they move together from your breast, out ahead of you and then out to the side and down and back up again (it’s easier to demonstrate than to describe.) This stroke is meant to be done with a frog-kick. It was my least favorite stroke.
Freestyle actually indicates that you can use any ol’ style stroke that you want – provided you’re not swimming an event where you use the same (regulated) stroke (i.e., you can’t sub in butterfly in a medely relay, because there’s already a butterfly leg).
That’s actually the crawl stroke – which seems to now be the “front crawl”, although we used to still refer to it as the “American crawl” (as opposed to the “Australian crawl”, or the “Tarzan”).
For completeness, here’s wikipedia’s bit on breaststroke (which used to be my favorite stroke, before my knees went kerflooey).
I know which one you’re talking about. I guess I’m doing the crawl.
That’s what it sounds like to me as well. If you want a good ab workout you can try this. Lie on your back, with your legs together kick up with your hips. You press up with your hips and down through your legs. This really works the abs and will probably burn like hell every time you do it. It’s just an upside down dolphin kick. Also if you want a better pull, make sure your thumb brushes by your hip, this insures you get a full arm pull.
I’ll try it…thanks!