A question asked on this website more and more Swimming build muscle.The answer to this is of course no, not to any real any degree.
Swimming is a great sport and I love it, in fact it’s the first sport I ever competed in to any real degree. When I was a youngster I competed in all the junior championships and I did very, very well in my honest opinion. I won a few local and national titles at the youth level before I left the sport for martial arts, and later Olympic lifting competitions.
But swimming is a great sport. It builds strength, endurance, both mentally and physically and of course it teaches you that “How to win attitude” you can get in life at a young age.
But when asking Swimming build muscle not really. Let’s look at the best swimmer in the world Michael phelps. Does he look like a muscular guy? In all honesty no, sure he had low body fat, but he didn’t have much more muscle than the average guy at a gym.
And this is an Olympic level swimmer, swimming build muscle does not happen.
In fact swimming is actually catabolic (it eats muscle)
To build muscle requires time under tension, activating and recruiting as many muscle fibres as possible.
Swimming is not made for building muscle it is obviously a sport and your goal is to improve your speed and technique while swimming.
Now when I get some very obese individuals coming to me for help, sometimes they are so obese weight lifting is even hard, So I start them on some very basic exercises depending on their age and mobility and I use swimming for the first 45 days to lose the weight, I’ve had this drop over 100lbs on some individuals which has then let me put them on a good cardio and weight lifting routine where the results really do show!
And I also do this to prevent loose skin and any issues like this.
While for a youngster I think swimming is a great sport to get them into, I would maybe start my child swimming around the age of 3-4 allowing him to do it a minimum of twice per week (assuming he enjoys it) by the age of 6 I would begin him in martial arts and by 8 I would get him weight training, while some may disagree with this, it is proven to be efficient and a healthy situation for a child to be in and help with bone and joint development.
Finally
It is always important to make sure you are enjoying what you are doing.
It doesn’t matter if it’s swimming or weight lifting, if your goal is to build muscle grab a good BODYBUILDING routine, however if you enjoy swimming and love it, train your ass off, eat well supplement well for your sport and be the best swimmer there could be you will not be fat and you will have a nice body simply by doing that!
