The journey of swimming
Dt:- 10/05/2018
When my 9-year old niece told me she will be competing in primary schools swimming competition in the winter of 2017, I thought to myself, maybe the little stream down the valley is now the competition pool.
‘Uncle I am a mermaid now; I got a silver medal’, she told me in a sweet, trembling little voice.
All I could think of, was swimming is not a ‘sport’, but a ‘game’ with no rules. When you find yourself excelling in a sport that you can put bread on the table, then that is certainly a job for keeps.
All of us, at one point in time, swam at some little reservoir or even the river as we grew up. But we never thought the benefits of swimming were so huge to our own health. We swam with no instructors and risked being drowned by water, but nonetheless enjoyed the exercise.
Now, Little Mermaids, a swim school in Strandfontein, Cape Town, helps you enjoy your swimming without any risk of drowning. The instructors take you through basics
You know after that long stressful day in office you just want to go home and relax on the couch, and hope to wake in the morning and be stressed again the following day, all you need to do is rush to the pool, flip water up and down, push harder for a mere 20 laps and go home! Best stress reliever!
If you want that good looking muscles Mr., or you want to burn those calories, girly, waste no time, hit the pool.
Swimming can provide you with some good low-impact therapy for some injuries and conditions. If you get a dislocation in your shoulder, ankle or arm, swimming will definitely come in handy; it will move your arms and legs to correct directions and healing will come naturally.
If you are in Cape To... read more....
Don’t let winter hamper you exercise routine
Dt:- 10/05/2018
As we all know, it is incredibly hard to keep motivated and carry on with exercise routines during the winter period. All you want to do is to sit in front of the heater and eat hot soup all day! If only we were bears and could just hibernate the entire winter and come out again in summer .Isn’t that just the epitome of a sweet life?
Reality check ……….we are not bears and exercise is incredible important for our health .It has been well documented in numerous studies just how beneficial exercise is for us all. In winter the cold weather just does something to us and it becomes twice as hard to find the motivation to actually get out of bed and exercise.
The main reason people struggle to work out in the winter is that their exercise of choice isn't an option in the colder months. Particularly in cities that rain during winter, all of a sudden road running, outdoor tennis, walking, tennis, golf are simply painful and not enjoyable anymore. In addition, no one wants to risk getting a cold by exercising in cold and wet weather.
However, identifying what stops us, planning well, and creating the right conditions can make winter work-outs some of the most beneficial and enjoyable ever.
Swimming has been identified as the perfect winter workout because swimming pools can be indoors and the water can be heated. On average, a swimmer can burn as many calories in an hour as a runner who runs nine kms in one hour. This is absolute gold!!! A form of exercise that burns so many calories and has a lot of additional health benefits & can be done all year round! What more can one ask for? No more excuses in winter, one can easily switch up their preferred outdoor exercise for swimming in winter or in fact all year!
That being said check out the Little Mermaids swim school ... read more....
Where does the journey to a Gold medal in the pool really start?
Dt:- 10/05/2018
With the recent South African successes in the pool at the Commonwealth games in the Gold Coast it was impossible not to have our South African hearts thump out of our chests with pride.
Cameron van der Burgh, Chad Le Clos and relative newcomer Tatjana Schoenmaker were absolutely inspiring in their swimming disciplines and made us forget of all the doom and gloom locally when our flag was hoisted during the medal ceremony when they all received their golden nuggets around their necks.
How proud have we become of our swimming presence on the world stage? Cameron, the evergreen poster boy for the sport. Tatjana who no doubt will have young girls lining up for swimming lessons to emulate her grace and success and who can forget Chad’s teary-eyed father growling the now iconic line, UNBELIEVABLE at the international media when his son took the Olympic gold in 2012?
These titans driving our national pride invariably come from humble beginnings from where they committed thousands of hours of preparation to their and by extension our national success.
So where did it start? If you consider that by the time Chad Le Clos competed in his first swimming event he’s been exposed to swimming training for many years in the space of the perceived low-profile presence of swim schools in SA, which also makes our swimming successes and subsequent international exposure so much more impressive.
A quick search however really highlighted the prevalence of swimming schools in SA and it quickly becomes apparent that there is a plethora of exciting and inspiring academies that not only focus on the traditional junior training curriculum’s but even a few programs for adult swimming training.
One of these gems is the Little Mermaids swim school in S... read more....
