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Baby Swimming – Why Start Early?
Baby swimming and starting early is essential for future swimming lessons
Swimming is one of the most useful skill everyone should be equipped with. It is a life saving skill that works out the whole system of our body, baby swimming or starting early drive faster physical development. This will in turn help us improve the health.
One of the biggest reason to learn swimming early is that it aids to prevent drowning for child and adults alike. It is imperative that baby swimming lessons are implemented earlier when they have not lost their “ability to swim”.
Beside that swimming also stimulates the brain effectively to increase intelligence and lengthen lifespan. Swimming does wonders to the body and mind and improves our quality of life. It is not a sober activity and it provides natural fun to both adults and children. Many people i know believe that swimming is not for children especially those under the age of 5 and below.
This is really one of the most ridiculous myth! Swimming in fact is especially good for children aged less than 5 years, to be exact they can even start their first lesson on the first day of birth.
Early measures to deter drowning
Drowning is ranked one of the major cause to the deaths of children at the age of 1 to 4 years old. This article will address every aspects of baby swimming, all the highly effective methods the school used. You can use it too to teach babies the art of swimming at early age!
This list might not be complete and we will add on few more articles via links and better share more essentials you need to know about baby swimming classes. We all also share about what to prepare, precautions measures and crucial benefits babies and child will reap from starting early learning to swim.
Do you know babies are natural expert swimmers?
Age is definitely one of the worse and biggest enemy for anyone learning to swim. Believe it or not it is always easier to teach 2 years old to swim compared to a 3 years old or even a 9 months as compared to a 2 years old. For newly born babies, they are pretty much expert swimmers which do not need much guidance or instructions on how to swim as they already know.
Every newborn is actually a well trained swimmers that have been training for this the past 7 months. They are all waiting for you to bring him or her to the pool to showcase his swimming and floating techniques acquired during their time in the womb. He used to swim aimlessly in the womb, now swimming in the real world will help to save their life someday!
Your baby might be a better swimmer than you
However this opportunity to use his skills acquired in his or her mother womb is short and temporary. They will lose this super power swimming abilities if they do not use it or are trained consistently. Our swim school usually encourages students to start from babies stage, best if the baby can be taught after the first month of birth.
Landing on the earth fighting with the gravity is a complete different environment for the babies so some parents might be surprised for babies they can usually swim better than crawling, creeping and walking on the floor. They started knowing the water first before the floor.
Do not be deceived by the cuteness senses we always get triggered when we see baby. We tend to feel that the baby are weak, untouchable and beautiful thus requires a lot of protection. But do you know that this baby you are holding right now might be a better swimmer than you are.
He or she could be the “swimming instructor”! Once again, do not be deceived by their cute chubby looks. Every newborn baby have been practicing their swimming inside the womb for approximately 7 to 8 months daily before entering the world.
- Week 1 to week 4 of pregnancy, the baby will develop gradually.
- From a growing ball of multiplying seeds cells to a capsule seed.
- On week 5, the initiation phase will begin development and formation of all the organs
- 6, the baby will have all his/her tiny organs formed
- During 6-7, the heart will start beating and the limbs will slowly bud out
- Lastly week 8, all the legs, arms and fingers would have develop his shapes and forms
Weighing not even 28g, height of less than one inch. The baby will start their first motion by moving rapidly with under developed limbs. At this stage of swimming and motions in the womb does not affect the mother as he/she is too tiny to cause any. We would call this stage the water familiarization stage where the baby is swimming and exploring the fluid filled womb of his mother.
Gradually with bigger strength and more developed limbs he will make progression to what we call water confidence. At this stage the baby start to enjoy swimming, nobody can stop the baby anymore. He or she will start to kick harder and harder often trying to wake his mother up during sleep.
Benefits of baby swimming lessons and why start it as soon as possible?
What motivates you to swimming might be the health and life saving potentials and benefits swimming can bring to you. i bet 90% of us started learning swimming cause our parents forced us to when we are young, and 10% for those who are really into swimming.
However learning to swim as babies is a simple, powerful ways which feed plenty of benefits to babies. This benefits accumulated via swimming lessons will go on and make them live a better life. In fact swimming is one of the most valuable and yet unmissable childhood education scientifically documented beside music lessons.
Water safety is very important
Drowning is the second major cause of deaths worldwide one rank behind anomalies or deformities deaths caused by birth defects. This data is researched on the age group from 1 to 4 years old. Drowning is cited as the third leading cause for deaths and unintentional injury.
This data taken from National Center For Injury Prevention And Control. Information might have been overly underestimated. Nonetheless that amounts accounts to more than 359,000 deaths caused by not knowing to swim worldwide. Many factors and circumstances may cause drowning, inability to swim remain the major cause of such deaths. All this drowning could have been prevented through learning to swim early on their stage of life.
Swimmers live longer, lead healthier and better lifestyle
Swimming will increase your lifespan and reduced your chances of death by 50% as compared to other sports such as walking and running. During the extended years of living, you will be living high quality and active lifestyle.
It is one well rounded exercise packed with so much more benefits as compared to many other aerobic exercises.
Lower the stress levels and boosts the brain efficiency
Swimmers are usually happier people. High amounts of endorphins are being released constantly during the swim sessions. This effects also found in yoga and listening to music are on much lower scale as compared to swimming. The effects of us feeling happy come from this chemicals in our brain known as endorphins.
This endorphins is a group of neurotransmitters or brain chemicals. Endorphins, when triggered and released give us positive emotions such as happiness. In short what ever that stimulates good mood and happiness have it’s root of endorphin releases. The effects you get after meditation is the same as what you are going to get during swimming. Both help to achieve serenity in mind, being disconnected from the world for awhile.
The breathing, submersion and splashing of water help us stay disconnected to the noises. Feeling completely immersed with all this movements, the water stimulation effects will cause our brain cells to grow. The response to external stimulation during childhood help boosts the brain development. Degenerated neurons which most probably will not recover if left to heal naturally will be repaired by regular swimming.
Chances of getting diabetes are lower in swimmers
Having and incorporating an exercise routine to your life is the best way to reduce the chances of diabetes. In the case of swimming, swimming breaststroke for half an hour will help to cut 900 calories. Reduce the chance of contracting diabetes as much as 10%.
For diabetic patients, swimming regularly will help to increase the insulin sensitivity which carry the same effects as produced via anti-diabetic drugs.
Lower your cholesterol and maintain it
There are two types cholesterol found inside our body. These cholesterol are in charge of all the thousands kinds of bodily functions in our body. There are mainly the infamous bad (low density cholesterol) and the highly desired cholesterol (high density cholesterol). To stay healthy we need to have a stable balance of this two kinds of cholesterol in perfect balance.
High density cholesterol reduces heart block
The increase of high density cholesterol will reduce deaths due to heart block by 3.5 -30 percent. Swimming plays an important role in ensuring the balance by increasing concentration of the high cholesterol density. In addition, swimming help to strengthen the structure of the arteries which in turn reduce the deposition of the cholesterol on the arteries walls.
Toning the muscles and makes them stronger
Every movement in the water, our body is actually working against the water. Water itself is 12 times more dense than the air. This also means that in order to walk through water we have to exert 12 times more effort than walking.
This resistance help to strengthen the muscle gradually building good strength and tone. The bones underneath the muscles also get stimulated during swimming, and reduced the chances of osteoporosis significantly at old age.
Improving our flexibility
Our joints and the ligaments will be moving in all directions and undergoning a variety of movements during swimming. This motion will make them loose and flexible. In contrast with gym sessions, each part of your muscle is working at a time. Swimming will moves the arms in circles, swings the hips and legs like a scissors.
In turn all this twisting and turning inside water will help to improve the spine, lengthen the body. And also boost the balance and coordination of whole body. Your baby could probably end up become a tight rope walker one day.
It makes the heart and lung healthier
Swimming will work out the muscles in tremendous ways, this will lead to the increase of the oxygen requirement. The heart will start to beat faster and stronger to supply more oxygen to our body during swimming. This changes system inside our body will put demands on the lungs to supply oxygen and remove the carbon dioxide. And leads to breathing much deeper than usual.
Swimming regularly over the years will help to strengthen the lungs and hearts making it stronger and healthier. Supplies of blood to the body organs increase with a stronger and healthier heart! Swimming 30 minutes per day will reduces the chance of high blood pressure and heart attack by 40%.
Swimming helps to prevent asthma by improving the lungs function. It will help to reduce severe asthmatic attacks. For children with severe asthma, they will also receive benefits with increased lung volume done through swimming.
Best way to spend quality time together
Swimming sessions will help both parents as well as babies to spend time on meaningful and fun activities. This process happen concurrently at the same time of reaping the benefits and development of the babies. The earlier we start swimming the more benefits we enjoy from it.
Choosing the right swimming pool
No pool is perfect when it comes to baby swimming. Still it is worth taking some time to go around where you live. This might mean going further than you anticipated. The main criteria to look out for when looking for baby swimming lessons pool will be:
- warmth
- depth
- quality of the water
- cleanliness
Always stay near to lifeguards or water confident adults
There should always be lifeguards on duty during the session around public swimming pools. For cases like hotel pool or private pool, always make sure there is a water confident adult to watch you and your baby. Taking baby to outdoor such as lake, river or on a beach you know to be safe, same criteria apply.
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