Swimming as a central tool in striving for quality of life
– written by Swimming Manager, Boaz Oved Shalom
“I’ll be honest with you Boaz, this whole thing isn’t for me,” the voice on the other end of the phone line tells me.
“When I have an hour to spare, I’m used to putting on my shoes and going for a run, maybe tennis on a weekend, but starting swimming now at the age of 70?”
It was Meir, the head of a well-known investment company. He, like many others, recently heard from his doctor that it would be better to start swimming instead of any other sport he was involved in. It wasn’t the first time his doctor told him this either, but this time Meir decided to take one step forward and pick up the phone. I listened to him patiently and felt that he was not completely comfortable. This is a guy, who after doing things in a certain way all of his life all of a sudden had to adopt a skill he had never acquired before, and execute it while almost completely naked.
That’s how it is, I thought to myself – whoever doesn’t go to ‘look’ for swimming at a young age, swimming will find you later in life.
“You’re in good company, Meir,” I reassured him. “Many like you come to me. Let’s meet for a trial lesson and worst case we’ll decide that it’s not for you”. It convinced him, and he came to the lesson. We will return to Meir again later.
The value of swimming
It should be noted that it is no coincidence that the doctor recommended that he would start swimming, since the doctor, too, knows very well what values his patient may derive from it. But why swimming? What is its advantage?
To try and describe the depth, the “three-dimensional” values that swimming combines and brings to the life of its practitioner – I will try to elaborate on each of the dimensions that make it up. As befits three-dimensionality, I will refer to three general areas in which swimming contributes to humankind: physiological, mental, and psychological.
In the physiological dimension, swimming has almost no competing sport – the improvement in cardiovascular endurance has proven to be most effective in swimming thanks to the different levels of effort it can be executed at, combined with the need to breathe consistently and correctly under the resistance of the water in exhalation. In swimming we get a balanced volume of effort [heart] and volume of breath [lung]. The horizontal body position on the water is also very significant, as it creates balance in blood pressure and reduces load from the cardiovascular system. Swimming improves the strength and flexibility of all muscle groups in the body and will shape us to be stronger, durable, and flexible. Some of what has been written here may also be true for other sports. Running, for example, works on cardiovascular endurance no less and even in a more rewarding way in terms of burning calories [about 5-7% more], but swimming has another winning feature up its sleeve – it is done in an environmental framework that has zero risk of injury. Neither joint concussions nor erosions of cartilage can happen in swimming. Imagine a business that has maximum revenue and minimum expenses – looking at the profit and loss statement – that’s what swimming does to our bodies.
The mental dimension
But it will not be enough to describe the benefits of swimming by listing its physiological benefits, since swimming is an individual sport performed in a unique environment of water, and it requires us to enter a different world, our primary world, the one we knew so well for nine months.
There is a feature in all cyclical sports, in which the repetition of movements slowly adds a kind of “cleansing” in the swimmer’s psyche and could put the swimmer in a state of “pure existence” – a state in which the mind is not preoccupied with the past nor the future, but only with its existence – the present. This state is known from the field of meditation and this clarity mentioned is its main goal. The meditator will shut oneself up for an hour in their room or go on a retreat in the Alps to reach it, but the swimmer will also reach the same point while paddling in the water of the sea or the pool, Their eyes are used only to orient themselves in space, but they do not observe anything, They are actually looking inward at this time.
This is one way to describe the value that swimming will contribute to the mental dimension of our soul.
The physiological dimension
Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs [1943] is a psychological theory that deals with the hierarchy of a person’s needs in their life. The idea in theory is that there is a hierarchy of needs in a person’s life, which are organized in order of importance. Any satisfaction of a stage will allow one to move on for trying to satisfy the next one. It is amazing to examine how swimming takes place in contribution to each stage of needs as Maslow’s pyramid described, and we can use it to have a deeper understanding of the psychological dimension, starting from the bottom:
The physiological needs—respiration, recreation, homeostasis—which we detailed in our first section. The need for security— stability, reduction in anxiety, physical strength, and self-efficacy. The need for love and belonging – feeling a part of a local, national and worldwide group of swimmers. Swimming groups are usually a significant part of the swimmers’ social life. The need for self-esteem – sense of pride and self-reward is present in every swimmer’s life. Swimming also gets a very positive social reputation to which the swimmer feels belonging to. Swimming in a team would usually bring appreciation from its members and coach. The need for self-actualization– to be able to touch in a variety of secondary areas of our lives, hobbies or more distant fields that we might find intriguing which are an expansion of horizons. Tasting from the “buffet” that life has to offer in terms of self-fulfillment. The average person, who has adopted swimming as a major hobby that contributes greatly to his or her lifestyle, sees swimming as the backbone of their quality of life.
Let’s go back to Meir: Meir came to the trial class and was somewhat irritated during the lesson. The exercises seemed strange to him, and he was not shy to express his opinion about them. The movements were not natural for him too; in reality they were performed and looked a little different from the concepts he had carried in his mind all his life. None of that mattered too much, because four weeks later he was in a completely different form. As you might have understood, because at the first moment he felt an improvement in efficiency, the door opened up for him, and he fell in love with the field. A year later our relationship evolved into him writing me late at night with messages such as: “Sorry for the short notice, but tomorrow morning I’m available for an hour at 7:00 a.m. Please come over for a private session.”
Of course I did. Every time.
To conclude, let’s just say that there are many ways to happiness. You can engage in many kinds of sports, but only a few of them can be sustained for long. It is possible to meditate and “quit” the world for a few moments in many ways, but we will not always get the same physical values from it. It is possible and recommended to maintain proper nutrition, to purchase the organic ingredients called “superfood” in the supermarket- the ones that contain higher nutritional values for the same caloric intake. But there’s only one activity given to humankind that I know, that has more “nutritional value” for the same amount of energy investment, and that is swimming. Therefore, it can be referred to as “super-sport”.
So, it is no wonder, why Meir’s doctor recommended him to invest his two free hours a week in swimming, and as the talented investor that he is, he quickly learned that he will get the highest profit from investing his time and energy in swimming, since it’s is a safe tool for a life of health, mental calmness and self-actualization, a vehicle for a high-quality lifestyle.
