Hi, i personally love swimming and favourite swimming stroke is freestyle. I went to swimming 6 to 7 days per week and it uses only purely freestyle. I swan 30 to 40 laps of 50 meters per day. But I am just curious does swimming burn fats and does swimming built 6-packs? As I have been article stating that by swimming freestyle you are able to burn fats as well as to built 6-packs. But does anyone here successfully burn fats and built 6-packs by purely doing swimming? If yes, how long will it take for people like me to burn fats and built 6-packs? I do need your guidance.
You should post this in the general swimming forum, you'll get many more responses.
To answer your question, though, swimming CAN burn tons of fat, and it CAN build up a nice set of abs. But most people won't. Now, people that do actual training, and use proper stroke technique will, but anecdotally, I'll tell you most people I see lap swimming do not use their core, and therefore won't build up their back or their abdominals. If you want to do that, you have to keep your chin down, breath looking more rearward than forward, and really REACH. Distance per stroke is a great way to tell you how effective your stroke is. I started taking about 19 strokes to get down a 25 yard pool. Now I'm down to 15, and even 14 when I'm fresh (16 when I'm tired, and occasionally 17 when I'm flat out exhausted). For 50M, I would guess 35 strokes for the length of the pool would be a very solid number.......but again, I see some people take that many to make it 25 yards, which is the result of very poor technique.
In mid January, I was about 185 pounds (84kg) and had a 34" waist (86cm). Lost about 12 pounds (5.5kg) and an inch (2.5cm) that way in a month. Started swimming in mid February, about twice the distance you do. Lost a little more, not too much. Then probably a month later, maybe 1.5 months, I started doing actual workouts posted here. I follow the Basic Training ones by SwimDogs (Mark Johnson). Also talked to one of the coaches on my kids' team to have my technique tweaked. Within 2 months, i had lost 30 pounds (13.5kg), 4" on my waist (10cm), and my resting heart rate had fallen 20 points. And yes, I started to see a bit of definition in my abs (sadly, when Summer hit, my workouts plunged, but I'm back at it again, now).
In addition to just freestyle, underwater dolphin kicks will help your abs tremendously......again, assuming you are doing them from your core and not your legs. With fins on your back will absolutely build up your abs. Can't recommend highly enough to go look at Mark's workouts and videos. But you do have to be a paid member to see thosee, but well worth it.
