Swimming is an ideal sport because it combines the various benefits of respiratory training without any harmful effect on the joints, in addition to being a sport available for the elderly and young people alike.

The Spanish magazine "La Vida Lotida" noted that athletes practice swimming to keep fit, even while recovering from an injury. Swimming is a sport that does not need advanced equipment to practice.

Here are eight benefits you should know:

1- Increasing intelligence
Any exercise increases your mental abilities, but can it make you swim smarter? An experiment conducted in Australia about children - who take swimming lessons and another group who do not engage in this activity - showed that children who swim regularly can master the language, and have advanced motor skills and high self-confidence, in addition to better physical development than the other group.

2- Increasing bone density
Many researchers said that swimming affects bone density, despite the popular idea that this result can only be achieved by doing weightlifting exercises.

In this regard, a study was conducted on mice divided into three groups, one group of mice in an enemy situation, and another swimming, and the last in an idle state and does not perform any specific activity. The weight and density of the bones in the swim mice were higher, especially at the thigh bone level.

Although more studies are needed, these new findings show that swimming is good for bone health.

3- Maintaining the flexibility of the body
Swimming requires moving various parts of your body, and making movements such as stretching and spinning to facilitate swimming in the water. With this activity, the ankles turn into fins and expand with every movement. However, this does not mean that you should not do stretching exercises, but repeated stretching during swimming helps increase the body's elasticity.

4- Reducing inflammation
The benefits of swimming on cardiovascular functions are well known. Research has shown that swimming-style aerobic sports help reduce the risk of inflammation that leads to hardening of the arteries of the heart. Reducing inflammation throughout the body limits the development of diseases.

5- Burning calories
Swimming is a great way to burn calories, as a person can burn more calories than running. In ten minutes, you can burn sixty calories when swimming on the chest, seventy when swimming on the back, a hundred in free swimming, and 150 in butterfly swimming.

6- Reducing stress and depression
Swimming has great benefits, especially in dealing with stress symptoms. Many recommend running or walking to improve your mood, and swimming will also help. In addition to increasing happiness hormones, you can feel similar to relaxing yoga.

Swimming also calms the nerves, and can give you a contemplative view of life, as the underwater breathing process helps to focus and remove all other distractions. This would naturally reduce stress and stagnation.

Research also showed that swimming can reduce stress damage in the brain through the process of "regenerating hippocampal cells."

7- Strengthening muscles
Swimmers gain strength at the level of muscle throughout the body. While runners focus on strengthening leg muscles, swimmers enhance the use of almost all body muscles by moving under water. During swimming, the legs move and the muscles are pushed forward, putting the back in a stretching position, while the stomach muscles are tightened to enhance the strength of the legs and stabilize the middle area. Therefore, swimming is one of the best exercises that gives you a complete exercise.

8- Extending life
All exercise can contribute to your longevity. Studies show that swimming is one of the best options. The researchers at the University of South Carolina-American observed - in a study of 40,547 people between the ages of twenty and ninety who had been followed for more than 32 years - that those who swim had a 50% lower death rate than those who ran or walked, or did not exercise at all .