Human swimming
Swimming is the movement of the body through water using arms and legs. Most of the time equipment is not used. People can use it for exercise and fun.[1] It main uses include bathing, cooling, fishing, recreation, exercise, and sport.
People swim using their arms and/or legs. Swimming can be divided into several "strokes": breaststroke, front crawl, butterfly, and backstroke are some of them, but the main stroke that is easiest to swim is front crawl.
Swimmers move through the water using the combination of other body parts. Swimmers have to be able to stay under water with holding their breath for long time.
Swimming can be done for fun, for exercise, or as a competitive sport. Many schools use swimming as a physical training exercise or just to have some fun after a hard week in the gym or outside.
Swimming has been around for a long time. We humans have learned how to swim from the sea creatures. When we evolved we took swimming with us to the next level. When we started swimming we could swim as well and fast as today. When we couldn’t swim we used the doggy paddle. And that was one of the most important techniques at that time.
I bet you thought swimming was a form of exercise. That it is, and a good one too. It works all the muscles simultaneously, stretches heart and lungs and is impact free. How it might be a form of cultural expression is less clear, but only according to how narrowly the term ‘culture’ is interpreted.
Competitive swimming became popular in the nineteenth century. The goal of competitive swimming is to constantly improve upon one's time(s), or to beat the competitors in any given event. However, some professional swimmers who do not hold a national or world ranking are considered the best in regard to their technical skills. Typically, an athlete goes through a cycle of training in which the body is overloaded with work in the beginning and middle segments of the cycle, and then the workload is decreased in the final stage as the swimmer approaches the competition in which he or she is to compete in. This final stage is often referred to as "shave and taper"; the swimmer tapering downs his or her workload to be able to perform at their optimal level. At the very end of this stage, before competition, the swimmer shaves off all exposed hair for the sake of reducing drag and having a sleeker and more hydrodynamic feel in the water.
