Cardiovascular Fitness

When we talk about cardiovascular fitness we are referring to the body’s ability to transport and utilise oxygen.

Oxygen that is collected by the lungs as we inhale, transferred into the blood and pumped around the body by the heart. The blood is then delivered to the essential organs and working muscles during exercise where the transported oxygen is used to help generate our energy supply. The main waste product of this process is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide that is transferred back into the blood, pumped back to the lungs and exhaled. All that in a nutshell is our cardiovascular system.

Swimming is one of many cardiovascular exercises that has a massively positive effect on our cardiovascular fitness , especially if we swim out of our comfort zone. In other words, we don’t ‘take it easy’ when we swim, but instead we swim at a speed or for a period of time that gets us nicely out of breath.

The more regularly we exercise, the more efficient each part of the cardiovascular system becomes. Our lungs are able to transfer greater volumes of oxygen into the blood, our blood is able to carry and transport a greater volume of oxygen and the heart is able to pump greater volumes of blood around our body for each single heart beat. The end result: we are fitter and feel fantastic!

Swimming on a regular basis helps to improve all aspects of our fitness, right from our muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance, our energy levels and psychological well being as well as our heart and lungs.

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The benefits of swimming

Swimming for improvments in health

The need to be safe in the water