As school starts for another year, so do ALL the fall activities – specifically, fall sports. Football. Soccer. Fall ball. Gymnastics. Whatever your child is into, there is likely a sport starting this month. With the chaos of those precious few after school hours, how do you squeeze in multiple activities, particularly when you have more than one child? How do you choose? 

There are no easy or simple answers to how to structure your evenings, or how to pick and choose which activities work with your time, budget and child’s interests. But there is one thing we know here at SwimWest – swimming will help support your child’s other sports! In fact, swimming is the perfect sidekick to pretty much any other physical activity, and it’s fairly easy to squeeze into your routine.

Here are our Top Reasons Why Swim Lessons Are the Perfect Complement to Other Sports

Time Commitment

Some sports, even as young as 8, are expecting multiple practices each week, games on the weekend, tournaments and extra training sessions. Phew! Squeezing in more than one high-demand activity can be a huge challenge. Swim lessons, however, are just once a week, and offered at multiple times, days and locations to find the perfect fit for your schedule. Your child won’t have to choose between two activities – swim lessons are a low commitment, high reward option!

Cardio fitness

Swimming is a well known full-body workout. It builds muscle tone, endurance, breath control and cardiovascular health. All of these benefits will support your child’s other sports! Learning breath control, for example, will help during high intensity exercises. Endurance will help your child keep up during a game. And strength training helps your child throw or kick a ball harder!

Low risk of injury

Swimming is gentle on your child’s body and joints, while simultaneously helping build muscle tone and cardiovascular endurance. Your child’s efforts in the pool are unlikely to cause injury that would prevent missing other practices or games.

Confidence

Swim lessons build skills slowly, through incremental steps towards mastery. As your child progresses through swim levels, they aren’t compared to their peers, or competing against them. They are working at their own pace and building their own success. This builds confidence in and out of the water.

Strength training

Swimming builds strength in shoulders, hips and torso -which are excellent for rotational motions in sports like golf, baseball and football. 

We hope these reasons help support you as you decide whether to stick with lessons this school year – and we really hope you do! Enjoy your fall sports and we hope to see you at the pool.