Swimming is one of the best forms of exercise around. There is an endless number of ways that you can push and train yourself in the water.
If you are looking for a straight-up upper body workout, strap on an ankle band, some paddles, and a pull buoy and blast away at your lats, shoulders, and chest.
If it’s your lower body that you want to tax, strap on some fins and get some low impact power and speed work.
In terms of aerobic exercise, swimming is a killer form of exercise. Not only are you having to hold your breath for stretches of time while swimming (unlike, say, running or biking where you can breathe freely), but you are exerting yourself, building lung capacity and getting in awesome shape at the same time.
But there are some limitations.
For the newbie swimmer, it can be daunting trying to learn the strokes, particularly if they don’t have a very strong swimming background. The realization that faster swimming is just as much great technique and efficiency as it is conditioning can feel like a counter-intuitive reality for those who are used to gritting their teeth and throwing more effort at their workouts.
And even once you do get mildly proficient with your strokes and technique, there is one particular problem that swimmers have that other athletes and sporting activities don’t struggle with: music.
For a long time, if you wanted to listen to music while you were swimming you’d be depending on the synchro team in the next lane blasting their underwater speakers or listening to the faint sound of the PA system in the pool. Neither of which were very promising.
Fortunately, there has been a whole swath of waterproof music players for swimmers come on the scene over the past few years, and waterproof iPods are right at the top of the heap. Luckily now we can experience the same head-bobbing, leg-pumping motivation that we get from our music in the weight room in the pool.
The Benefits of Swimming with a Waterproof iPod
Music helps you perform better. Research has shown that when we have the right tunes—in other words, the correct BPM—we swim faster. How awesome is that? You get your favorite music to listen to and you swim faster as a result? Uh, okay, sign me up!
Music helps beat boredom. Swimming for long stretches of time can get monotonous. I know. I’ve done more 6,500m workouts that I can count, and during each of those sessions, I pined for something to make it a little less drudgery. The tunes, whether it’s a podcast, a book, or your favorite tunes, rocking out with a waterproof iPod in the pool will beat the boredom of swimming in a mostly-silent pool.
The Takeaway:
Working out consistently—and swimming is no exception—is tough! We need every motivational tool we can muster up in order get our butts into the gym and the pool. Listening to music, and strapping on a waterproof iPod while swimming your laps, will help you swim faster and swim longer. That’s a world-class win-win if there ever was one!
