Swimming has been around for a very long time.

It’s no surprise, then, that swimming

has a history filled with tons of interesting, and maybe even useful, facts! Swimming is
engaging and fun but also full of weirdness and crazy fun facts.

Here are some amazing facts to get you started.

Swimming Fun Facts

1. Hair Creates Friction in 7. Swimming is a meditation

Water
That is why professional swimmers
shave their hair or wear swim caps.
It creates less friction, which allows
them to move faster!
Many people even consider it a form of meditation,
as the rhythm of stroking through the water for a
while seems to lessen any problem you might have.

2. Swimming Gives You A Full 8. Swimmers sweat in the pool.

Body Workout Swimmers lose just as much sweat in the pool as any
Not only does swimming burn other athlete loses on land. There is, however, not
calories, it improves flexibility, enough research to tell us how much sweat
strengthens your heart and lungs swimmers actually lose in the water
and strengthens all your major
muscles. It also aids in mental
wellbeing! That is what I call
a workout!
3. The Most Popular Stroke Is 9. Swim Fins
the Crawl Benjamin Franklin invented swim fins to help move
In fact, it is the stroke of choice through the water more efficiently.
for freestyle competitions and
triathlons! That is because the front
crawl is the fastest swimming
stroke.

4. Swimming goggles 10. Swimming lesson

The first swimming goggles were The earlier children begin to understand what
made from tortoise shells happens in the water, the sooner they will be able to
come to terms with how to stay safe around it, and
the faster they will be able to take on what they
learn in their lessons
5. Freedivers can hold their 11. The world’s youngest internationally

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 breath for more than 10 minutes. competitive swimmer is only 10
How long can you hold your In 2015, at the age of 10, Alzain Tareq became the
breath? Go! If you are like most world’s youngest competitive swimmer in a World
people, you start to panic at Championships. The Bahrainian girl competed
about 30 seconds. People in good against swimmers who were twice her age. She
health and with proper training finished her 50-meter butterfly meet in 41.13 seconds
can hang on for at least 2 minutes.
Freedivers take the cake. A
freediver can hold his/her breath
for as long as 10 minutes. The world
record for breath-holding is 22
minutes, which is currently held
by Stig Severinsen.
6. Shaving isn’t just for 12. Swimmers can flex their toes to the ground.
removing hair. In order for swimmers to propel their bodies through
Swimmers shave to increase the water, they must have good flexibility in their feet
performance. While many believe and ankles, which is why you see a lot of pointed
swimmers shave to reduce drag toes in swimming competitions. This allows a smooth
and to look better in a suit, studies surface to be created for water to rush by, reducing
suggest that shaving actually drag.
increases the sensitivity of a
swimmer’s skin in the water. The
hyper-awareness allows swimmers
to “feel the water” and its pressure
so they can adjust to improve
technique.

These are just a few facts among many concerning swimming, some of this information is
already known to you and maybe some of these are new but we hope that this will
motivate you to keep learning about the wonderful ways of water.

Property of and for the exclusive use of SLU. Reproduction, storing in a retrieval system, distributing, uploading or posting online, or transmitting in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise of any part of this document, without the prior written permission of SLU, is strictly prohibited.
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