An Eye into Swimming: More than a Physical Sport

When the word ‘swimming’ is mentioned, people often think about heavy body endurance and intense full-body exercise. While it is true that swimming builds muscular endurance and cardiovascular strength, it also works every muscle in your body during the process. But to many athletes around the world who train endlessly, swimming is a lot more than just a physically demanding sport—it’s test of everyday mental reliance and life built around it.

Despite being one of the most gruelling sports, swimming often goes unnoticed, except of course, when it is the Olympic year. For the average student-athlete, their day starts off with swim practice as early as 5 a.m. with a plummet into freezing waters before the rooster is even up. These athletes are already grinding through laps, whether sprinting or working on aerobic endurance speed while the average high schooler is still deep asleep. Not to mention the struggles of finishing practice, rushing to shower and changing in time for school, often with the lingering chlorine perfume as strong as ever. 

But that aside, the actual sport is much more physically and mentally taxing than one might think. Unlike other sports that require relatively little training for success (for example, rowing—Ananya Prasad trained for just three years to row across the entire Atlantic), swimming requires a lot of persistence and dedication just to be considered decent.  

Given this, many people underestimate the mental strength and resilience that swimming requires. People can agree when I say it is easier to fight off the pain from a leg injury than the exhaustion and overwhelming weakness you feel when you're down in bed with a fever. The mental battle to give into the pain, to make it stop instead of pushing forward, is where the real exertion in swimming lies. To keep pushing on. That is where consistency comes into play.  

If there's one thing I have learned, the key to the game is consistency. Even outside sports and fitness, if you are consistent, you will see progress, no matter what you do. A common phrase said among coaches is, “You race how you train”. This phrase reinforces the idea that constant effort in practice will lead to your body being able to race with a reliable performance. If you train at race pace, you'll be able to maintain that speed when it matters the most.