Swimming is known to be one of the most popular sports that help to grow taller. However, many people are still debating whether this is a myth or a fact. Another common concern is when you should start swimming and how often. So what is the correlation between swimming and height? Let’s find out together.
Swimming makes you stretch your limbs and body, which helps maintain epiphyseal plates between bones extending. These gaps give your bones room to grow, hence enhancing your height overall. However, these growth plates stop doing their job after the age of 18 on average, which is why children should learn how to swim at an early age.
What if you have passed your teenage years? Well, do not quit swimming since it can still help to adjust your posture, and straighten up your spine, so you can stand as tall as you should be. Correcting posture creates an illusion of increasing your height, and some of us are slightly shorter than we truly are. Swimming alone cannot make you grow taller. In fact, playing any sport alone cannot do so, but staying active still holds a vital role in supporting that journey. Unlike other sports, swimming requires your body to move perpendicular to the Earth’s gravity. It decreases the weight and pressure on your spinal discs and joints.
Types of swimming style and stroke
All over the world, there are countless swimming styles and strokes, and many of them you may have never encountered, such as sidestroke, combat side stroke, trudgen, and so on. In this article, let’s go through the most common four that everyone should know and how they affect your body.
Freestyle/front crawl
This style portrays the most popular image when you first think of swimming. It requires your arms and legs to keep paddling in order to move forward. As a result, your body stretches to disperse your surface area. This procedure is not only to keep the body floating but also to minimize water resistance. By practicing freestyle/front crawl often, the gaps between your growth plates within your leg bones and spines increase, which gets you to grow slightly taller.
Backstroke
Backstroke is almost identical to freestyle/front crawl, but your body faces up. With similar movements come similar results. The epiphyseal plates between your bones, cartilage, and spinal discs stretch out as you practice this swimming technique. When your bone structure is more relaxed, your body has more room for growth.
Breaststroke
Breaststroke is popular and suitable for beginners because of its easy-to-learn technique. Like other styles and strokes, this method requires your arms and legs to move simultaneously, in which your joints extend for better flexibility. If you are new to swimming and want to test the theory of whether it will help increase your height, this stroke is a great start.
Butterfly
Butterfly style is the most advanced swimming technique. It requires a flexible spinal cord, and great arm swings to propel you forward while maintaining your legs straight together in order to perform dolphin kicks. Most of the movements will focus on your arms, spine, and abdomen, unlike those methods above. As a result, you can feel straightening in your spine rather than legs, compared to other strokes.
When should you start?
Swimming is not simply any kind of sport but also a survival skill. Learning and forming the habit at a young age should be a priority. Babies know how to stay afloat since they were born. However, it is best to introduce infants to the swimming pool when they are at least two months old since their bodies cannot regulate temperature like adults.
By forming the habit of swimming before adolescence along with a healthy lifestyle, it can have a tremendous impact on your physical development. Although swimming alone cannot ensure anyone at any age grows taller, by collaborating with a nutritional diet, this lifestyle will create a healthy and fully mature body.
Other benefits of swimming
As mentioned earlier, one of the most obvious benefits of swimming is correcting your posture. In the modern world, people are less likely to be active outside but sit for hours straight, whether at school or at work. Swimming is a great beginner sport for anyone, especially those who want to maintain correct posture.
Another physical benefit of swimming is strengthening our cardiovascular system. Lung and heart muscles are also highly active during swimming to maintain a great flow of oxygen throughout the body, which helps reinforce and train them in a similar way to your arms and legs.
Like any other sport, swimming helps your body to release endorphins, endocannabinoids, and dopamine. Endorphins not only block the feeling of pain while practicing but also increase sensational pleasure. Additionally, endocannabinoids create calming euphoria after exhaustion to relax your mind and body. Last but not least, dopamine holds one of the most essential roles in regulating your feelings, sleep, mood, heart rate, and memory. These benefits establish positive effects on your physical reactions, learning ability, and self-confidence.
In summary
After all, we cannot expect to grow taller solely by swimming as any other sport. It is only one of many factors that contribute to your increase in height. Along with swimming, having a diet that includes diverse nutrients is also necessary, as well as high-quality sleep. Sleep is the foundation for the body’s healing process. If swimming stretches out your bones and muscles, a nutritional diet provides the brick and mortar to fill in the gap, sleep is the worker that helps you rebuild your body. Sleep plays a crucial role in children’s mental and physical development. Our brain and body produce growth hormones throughout the day, but most of them are between 10 pm and 1 am. It emphasizes the importance of why kids should go to bed early at night and maintain a minimum of 9-hour sleep.
So, to have a healthy and tall body, we must have the holy trinity of a nutritional diet, restful sleep, and an active lifestyle. Achieving a tall body is not a one-day miracle, but an accumulation of discipline at an early age.
- Related post: How To Get Taller At 12?
Mike Nikko is a blogger with over 15 years of experience. I will bring you the best product reviews and other useful life experiences, tips to increase height, tips to improve health… If you have any questions, feel free to ask Mike Nikko!