by
Olivier Poirier-Leroy
Hitting the pool and swimming on the daily offers a wide range of benefits, from improved performance in the water to better feel for the water to more energy for conquering the rest of the day.
Unlike many sports and forms of exercise, swimming is a low-impact form of full-body exercise that can be done consistently.
In this article, we will look at the reasons why swimming can be every day and why it’s one of the most rewarding habits you can develop.
Let’s dive in.
The top reasons to swim each day include:
Next, we will look at each benefit in closer detail. Later, we will also offer some tips on how to make swimming part of your daily routine.
Swimming every day accelerates progress in the water. The more often you swim, the faster you are going to improve, whether your goal is to improve swim speed, get more fit, or lose weight.
Consistency paired with a well-structured plan that targets improvement, whether that’s technique or endurance or both, with sufficient recovery is tough to beat.
There are some obvious caveats here: your daily swim workouts should be focused on continual improvement, target pace times, and progress, but the more often you hit the water, the faster and the more fit you will get.
Swimmers have a sometimes-mythic relationship with the water, especially when describing a feel for the water. Feel for the water is how we describe how we catch, pull, kick, and move through the water.
On days when our feel for the water is heightened, it feels as though the water is our best friend. On days when our feel for the water is lacking, it seems as though sand is falling between our fingers when trying to pull ourselves across the pool.
Swimming more often increases and strengthens proprioception, which is your ability to sense position and movement in space (or in our case, the water).
The more opportunities you have to test hand movements, arm position, hip roll, the angle of your feet when kicking, the sharper this prized skill becomes.
Swimming daily allows swimmers to increase sensory awareness of how the body relates and experiences with the water, increasing “feel” and ultimately helping you swim more efficiently.
Swimming is a low-impact form of exercise thanks to the buoyancy of the pool water, which protects joints, bones and muscles from impact (like with running).
The water supports a significant portion of your body weight, reducing the pounding on the bones and joints that is more typical of many land-based forms of exercise.
Daily swimming is so low impact, in fact, that it’s often used a form of recovery for athletes as it provides a full body form of exercise without overly stressing the musculoskeletal system.
Hitting the pool and swimming every can significantly improve mood through a blend of stress reduction and boost in mood.
When a group of novice swimmers undertook a 10-week open swimming training program, participants saw reduced anger, fatigue, and feelings of depression.
Another meta-analysis analyzed 23 papers studying the mental health benefits of aquatic exercise, including leisure swimming, competitive swimming, and water aerobics. Key themes included reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety and mood disturbances, with increased mood, self-esteem and overall psychological well-being.
Daily swimming can be great for your physical and mental well-being.
Good day? Go for a swim. Bad day? Go for a swim.
One of the most important parts about exercise is maintaining consistency. Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion, the law of inertia, states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force.
This concept is a great metaphor for increased consistency with your swimming!
Once that initial push of getting started happens, and you start going to the pool each day, the faster the routine reinforces itself, making it easier to keep going than stopping and re-starting.
Daily swimming keeps the momentum going in the pool.
Once swimming every day becomes a staple of your routine, you’ll find that it becomes easier and easier to just go to the pool, reducing decision fatigue. At this point, going to the pool doesn’t require hyping yourself up, or forcing motivation; it’s just something you do.
Daily swimming removes decision fatigue as the decision is already made for you.
Each day, you swim. No further decision-making is required.
One of my favorite reasons for going to the pool each day is that it is the one hour of the day where it’s just me and my thoughts. No work emails, social media, or breaking news barking at me from my smartphone.
Just me, the black line, and some much-needed and appreciated mental stillness. The rhythmic stroke patterns, controlled breathing, buoyancy of the water (which is a great metaphor for detaching yourself from the gravity of day-to-day life).
Daily swimming offers a respite from the busyness of life and gives swimmers quiet moments to themselves where they can focus on themselves, their breathing, and some mental quiet.
Swimming daily isn’t just great exercise during the middle of the day, but it promotes better sleep in the middle of the night.
The full-body nature of the sport naturally creates some exhaustion that helps tire the body, the mental stillness discussed earlier helps quiet busy brains (anxiety, ahem), and can be used to reset your circadian rhythm.
A meta-analysis found that with just a few weeks of regular exercise, people suffering from insomnia started to fall asleep earlier and sleep later (Passos et al., 2012).
Getting your butt in the pool regularly will help you sleep better each night when you put your chlorinated head on the pillow.
Once we’ve toweled off, and the workout has been logged, there’s that post-workout endorphin rush that comes with swimming each day. This post-swim buzz leaves us feeling recharged and refreshed.
Whether it’s the solitude of swimming with your thoughts or the satisfaction of getting after a hard threshold set, that post-swim high is rewarding and sets you up to conquer the rest of the day.
Here are some quick tips for making daily swimming part of your daily routine:
Set a schedule. What gets scheduled, gets swum! Choose a specific time to hit the pool each day. For best results, pair with something that is already a fixture of your schedule. For example, “Each day when I wake up, I go to the pool for my swim workout.”
Start small. When starting out with a new routine, the goal is consistency and momentum. By starting with shorter, smaller swim workouts, you give yourself lots of runway to increase workout size later. Focus on building the habit of daily swimming before launching yourself into huge daily swim workouts.
Prep for success. Remove obstacles by packing your swim stuff ahead of time. Pack your swim bag, set out your swim gear, and reduce as many decision-making barriers as possible to ensure success.
Keep things fresh. To avoid boredom, keep your swim workouts fresh by mixing different strokes, drills, kick, and pull. Implement gear like swim fins, paddles, or resistance tools like drag chutes and resistance tubing to keep things interesting and fresh.
Track the streak. A powerful motivator to just keep swimming (to quote Dora from Finding Nemo) is having a visual record of adhering to your daily swims. Print out a calendar and check off each day swum. Track your swim workouts with a swim watch. Keep a running tally in your swim log. Stacking the streak, tallying the days swum, and having a visual reminder of your hard work is an insanely motivating way to keep momentum going.
Making swimming a daily part of your life is more than just a commitment to smelling like chlorine 24/7; it’s a huge investment in your overall well-being.
Daily swim workouts will help you accelerate faster toward your goals, improve your mood, and even help you sleep better at night.
Start the streak today, strategize your swim training for longevity and consistency, and reap the benefits of hitting the pool each day.
9 Health Benefits of Swimming. Are you curious what the full range of benefits of swimming includes? Check out this list of the physical and mental health benefits of the greatest sport on the planet.
The Beginner’s Guide to Lap Swimming. Want to start swimming? Here’s the beginner lap swimmer’s guide to everything you need to know about getting in shape and having fun at the lap pool.
Olivier Poirier-Leroy Olivier Poirier-Leroy is the founder of YourSwimLog.com. He is an author, former national level swimmer, two-time Olympic Trials qualifier, and swim coach.
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