For living creatures, swim or swimming is a way of moving on in the water. Swimming is an activity that can be both useful and recreational. Its primary uses are bathing, cooling, fishing, recreation, exercise, and sport.

Human swimming

Swimming has been known amongst humans since prehistoric times; the earliest record of swimming dates back to Stone Age, from around 7,000 years ago. Competitive swimming started in Europe around 1800 and was part of the first modern 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, though not in a form comparable to the contemporary events. It was not until 1908 that regulations were implemented by the International Swimming Federation to produce competitive swimming.^[1]

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. The freestyle, in competition, is a swim race where the racers can swim any of the four strokes. Almost everyone chooses front crawl. Swimmers move through the water using the combination of other body parts. Swimmers need to be able to stay above water and sometimes be able to hold their breath for a long time. A person needs to be healthy if he/she wants to do it as a sport.

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.

Other pages

• Winter swimming

References