Source: July/August 2009 issue of AARP magazine.
Findings: 40,000 men followed for 32 years. During that time swimmers had a 50% lower death rate than all others. Conclusion: Keep swimming!!
The study, which was done by Steven Blair and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina, used ongoing data from many decades accumulated at the Cooper Center for Aerobics Research. The demographics were probably reasonably similar to USMS male swimmers--generally reasonably affluent people who went to the Dallas center for executive health consultations and the like.
I interviewed Dr. Blair about this study for an article on swimming that recently came out in Men's Health (if you are interested, send me an email and I will send you back a .pdf of my story: jamesthornton1@comcast.net )
Dr. Blair told me he was not willing to go out on a limb and say that swimming is better for you than running, but I personally suspect that ongoing research may find this is, in fact, the case. If so, the various hypotheses I personally came up with to explain the superiority of swimming (and please remember, these are only conjectures on my part and may well be proved false or red herrings) include the following:
lower injury rate leads to more consistent training (probably some validity here)
the inclusion of highly vigorous sets (most distance runners don't do much if any sprinting at all, whereas most masters swimmers often do these)
a full body workout as opposed to mainly the legs in running workouts
exercise in a horizontal position may have some differential effects on heart beating, blood pressure effects, etc.--admittedly kind of muddled, but swimmers don't need to work against gravity, which could have some as yet unexplained benefit
exercise in a cooler environment (running, even in moderate weather, generates tremendous body heat; swimming probably does, too, but the water helps remove this more quickly than the air, perhaps allowing us to spend more energy of actual muscles as opposed to heat dissipation
I am sure there are other possibilities, too, and again, swimming superiority over other sports has not been proven by this one study, partly because the number of swimmers was relatively small compared to the runners, walkers, and sedentary subjects. Still, it is intriguing, and other research by Joel Stager, Ph.D., (a masters swimmer himself) would indicate there are definite benefits to swimming that may be unique to the sport. Again, please feel free to email me for a copy of my article. I looked on the MH website, but the piece hasn't been posted there yet, at least I couldn't find it.
The study, which was done by Steven Blair and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina, used ongoing data from many decades accumulated at the Cooper Center for Aerobics Research. The demographics were probably reasonably similar to USMS male swimmers--generally reasonably affluent people who went to the Dallas center for executive health consultations and the like.
I interviewed Dr. Blair about this study for an article on swimming that recently came out in Men's Health (if you are interested, send me an email and I will send you back a .pdf of my story: jamesthornton1@comcast.net )
Dr. Blair told me he was not willing to go out on a limb and say that swimming is better for you than running, but I personally suspect that ongoing research may find this is, in fact, the case. If so, the various hypotheses I personally came up with to explain the superiority of swimming (and please remember, these are only conjectures on my part and may well be proved false or red herrings) include the following:
lower injury rate leads to more consistent training (probably some validity here)
the inclusion of highly vigorous sets (most distance runners don't do much if any sprinting at all, whereas most masters swimmers often do these)
a full body workout as opposed to mainly the legs in running workouts
exercise in a horizontal position may have some differential effects on heart beating, blood pressure effects, etc.--admittedly kind of muddled, but swimmers don't need to work against gravity, which could have some as yet unexplained benefit
exercise in a cooler environment (running, even in moderate weather, generates tremendous body heat; swimming probably does, too, but the water helps remove this more quickly than the air, perhaps allowing us to spend more energy of actual muscles as opposed to heat dissipation
I am sure there are other possibilities, too, and again, swimming superiority over other sports has not been proven by this one study, partly because the number of swimmers was relatively small compared to the runners, walkers, and sedentary subjects. Still, it is intriguing, and other research by Joel Stager, Ph.D., (a masters swimmer himself) would indicate there are definite benefits to swimming that may be unique to the sport. Again, please feel free to email me for a copy of my article. I looked on the MH website, but the piece hasn't been posted there yet, at least I couldn't find it.
