If you're looking for a tone stomach but you hate traditional exercises like crunches and sit-ups this article discusses using swimming as a great alternative to get in shape, burn calories, and tone your stomach muscles.
I had read once that Arnold Schwarzenegger in his younger days utilized swimming as one of his main cardio and muscle toning exercises. He used to swim everyday and incorporated swimming in as much as 50% of his workouts. Arnold Schwarzenegger will go down in history as one of the most symmetrically balanced body builders ever. In other words all his muscle groups were in proportion to his body size. He obviously knew what he was doing.
Use Swimming Exercises to Tone Stomach
Swimming is one of the most effective exercises to tone stomach muscles as well as your entire body. It is one of the best cardiovascular workouts, and will contribute greatly to toning muscles throughout your entire body not to mentioned increase your endurance levels. Swimming exercises are very low impact so the risk of injury is very minimal. Swimming is not always easy to do but if you can incorporate it into your workout routines it will contribute greatly toward achieving a Tone Stomach. Here are a few exercises to do in the pool:
Swim laps
When you think of swimming as an exercise obviously doing laps with your strongest stroke can be done. In fact it is not a bad idea to practice several different swim strokes to get proficient in several since each one will work you muscles in different ways. In the beginning you may not have much endurance but keep working on it. It will improve over time.
Interval Training
As you get proficient in several swim strokes, try warming up with one swim stroke for a couple of laps, then go all out with your strongest swim stroke until fatigued, and then follow up with several laps with a lessor used swim stroke until you re-coupe. Repeat this several times depending on your fitness level. The number of laps is not as important. Just keep working at it and your endurance will increase rapidly and so will the improvements in your tone stomach.
Additional Pool Exercises
You can actually do an ab routine in the water by walking across the shallow end of the pool, lift your knee up towards your chest keeping your back as erect as possible. Focus on using your abdominal muscles each time you pull your knee up to your chest. The water acts as resistance and will fatigue the abdominal muscles if done correctly.
Move to the deeper end of the pool to do leg lifts. Steady yourself against one of the walls of the pool and pull up one leg at a time towards your chest. Alternate between pulling each leg as briskly as possible to provide a good cardio workout and focus on the ab muscles throughout the exercise. Again, the water acts as resistance and will fatigue the abdominal muscles if done correctly.
Tread water
Treading water utilizes most of the upper and lower muscles in your body. If you think about it, your entire body is working to keep above water. You can try to tread water for a 1 minute set with 30 to 60 seconds rest in between. Try this for 5 times or more depending on your fitness level. Try to focus on tightening your ab muscle while doing the exercise as well.
Incorporating swimming exercises for an overall body workout and specifically to tone stomach muscles is a good low impact routine and can be done by anyone with any fitness level. Because swimming involves so many muscle groups you burn a ton of calories in a 30 minute routine. Remember to start slow if you are a beginner.
Pretty Sound Advice On How To Get a Tone Stomach
I highly recommend a workout routine with as many diverse exercises you can manage to implement. This will keep things fun and prevent you from getting burned out and resistant of your training. Ab workout routines tend to become one of the first things people give up on, so to get that nice tone stomach you have to mix things up.
Tory is a former U.S Marine and has over 15 years in the health and fitness arena.
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