22 Shocking Swimming Facts Every Swimmer Should Know About
Looking for some awesome facts about swimming? Look no further! We have compiled a list of some of the most awesome swimming facts in the world (well, maybe, who knows? We are positive that you will love the list anyway).
1. Free divers are great at holding their breath – We mean it. Hold your breath now. How long can you do it for? We are going to assume a couple of minutes at the most. Probably not even that. Most people can manage 30-seconds. Free divers? These guys can hold for up to 10 minutes.
2. Swimming has been part of the Olympics since 1896.
3. Swimming at the Olympics used to be for males only. It was not until 1912 that the first women were able to compete as swimmers at the Olympics. Now they are taking the Olympic world by storm! In fact, some of the best swimmers in the world are female.
4. Swimming is probably one of the best ways in which you can exercise. This is because it allows you to exercise all your muscles at once!
5. Kangaroos are fantastic swimming. In fact, if you are untrained, there is a good chance that the kangaroos may be better than you!
6. The very first swimming stroke was the breaststroke. It is the slowest of strokes at the Olympics, but you need to be awesome at it to get it right!
7. If you are a top swimmer, then you are likely to suffer from shoulder pain (sorry!). Over half of the best swimmers in the world suffer from regular shoulder pain. We have no doubt that this is down to the fact that they train a lot.
8. Paintings from ancient Egypt show that people have been swimming for at least 10,000 years. We presume that people were swimming before that, but these are the very first picture representations of it.
9. If you are a professional swimmer, you will wear a swim cap for a reason. It is not to stop your hair from getting wet! It is because your hair creates friction in the water. You may also find that some top swimmers decide to go bald for this reason.
10. While we are on the subject of ‘baldness’, you may find that some professional swimmers will shave the rest of their hair on their bodies. This is not going to be for friction purposes, but it certainly helps. The reason why they are shaving the hair on their bodies is because they find that they can ‘feel’ the water a little bit better. This enables them to adjust their technique as they see fit.
11. If you want to burn a lot of calories, then swimming is always going to be the best route to go down. This is because swimming can burn far, far more calories than running or biking ever will. In fact, you can burn up to 784 calories when you are swimming for an hour. Ride a bike? You will only be burning 483. Of course, this is all going to be dependent on your weight and how hard you are working yourself!
12. The most popular swim stroke in the world is the crawl, but we are positive that you know this already. It is also the fastest way to swim if you can get it right. However, it is also one of the toughest strokes to nail as you are really going to need to work on your breathing if you get it right.
13. 65% of people in America can’t swim! This is a massive shame, as they are missing out on a fantastic activity. Thankfully, it should not be too difficult to learn how to swim in some cases. You can learn easily as an adult!
14. If you ever feel like visiting the largest swimming pool in the world, you can head to Morocco. It covers 8.9 acres. This means 480 meters by 75 meters!
15. One resort in Malaysia has 643 swimming pools for people to use.
16. You may think that swimming competitions are fairly new, but they are not. Japan was holding them over 2,000 years ago! This was almost 1800 years before it started to become a popular competitive sport in England.
17. If you are a high school swimmer that is competing, then you can expect to make 1 million strokes per season. That is a lot of stress on your muscles, but you will improve drastically. Now, think about all those swimmers who compete at the Olympics. Imagine how much swimming they must be doing per day!
18. It is difficult to swim at the Olympics. You need to be the best of the best. Only 1850 swimmers in the USA ever qualify to even attempt to qualify for the Olympics. Only 50 of them are going to get into the swim team. If you are not good. If you are not fantastic. This is not the career for you.
19. You sweat when you swim! Many people think that you do not sweat, but you really do. We can’t really say how much you sweat while you are in the pool, for obvious reasons. However, we do know that people who are swimming are likely to lose just as much sweat as somebody who is exercising ‘on the land’.
20. Mieko Nagaoka is the oldest competitive swimmer in the world. He is still doing it at the ripe old age of 100! He was the first person at this age to ever finish a 1500-meter freestyle swim. We can’t tell you what his time was, but we can’t imagine that it comes close to the world record holders.
21. Diana Nyad, at the age of 64, was the first person to ever swim from Cuba to Florida. Now, the 103-mile trek is bad enough, but knowing that she done it when she had almost hit retirement age is even more amazing!
22. Research suggests that starting as a ‘baby’ swimmer in the water boosts ability to swim later in life…even if you are not really swimming at that time.
