I was never a big swimmer when I went to the gym, but this Summer, my girlfriend and I moved to an apartment with a pool, and I’ve fallen in love. How did I go this many years without realizing what an amazing workout swimming is? It’s like a machine which hits every muscle equally, and it’s logistically so much easier than a lengthy session at the gym. In a couple weeks doing progressing lap-training, I’ve seen better results than I’ve gotten from months lifting weights or running on treadmills. It almost feels like I’m cheating, like some suits are gonna jump out and arrest me for exercising too efficiently 
How does one swim for fitness? It’s dead easy. Put on a swimsuit. Jump in the pool. Swim back and forth for N laps. That’s it! I suppose form still matters, but not nearly as much as with weight-training. Basically, as long as you don’t drown, your body is going to speed-evolve like a primitive monkey who just discovered the black monolith from 2001: Space Odyssey.
I’ve been applying the principle of Progressive Training in the pool, and it’s working really well. I started with 20 laps (which is less impressive than it sounds– we’re just talking a dinky apartment pool here, maybe 30 feet across at the most). That was a few weeks ago. Now I’m up to 60 (!). That’s a 3x increase, and it’s never been particularly difficult. I guess I am blessed with an above-average pain tolerance, and that’s been very helpful with other physical training I’ve done, but it just hasn’t been an issue with fitness swimming. The familiar “good soreness” is there, but somehow the way it’s balanced across the whole body seems to dull it significantly. It’s like I took the old saying “no pain no gain” and stole all its lunch money then kicked it down into the dirt.
I’ve never been the jock type, and have always gotten stuck at a plateau when trying to train for appearance. I’m naturally the slender body type and have never managed to pull off the Schwarzenegger look, even when I was working out every day for half a year. I guess weight training doesn’t play to my strengths; swimming does. Lately I’ve found myself literally standing in front of the mirror, shirt off, admiring myself O_O Needless to say, my girlfriend is thrilled
Another benefit is I can eat whatever I want, with no guilt. Do you know about the Michael Phelps diet? The guy who won eight gold medals for swimming in the 2008 Olympics? Yeah… he consumes 12,000 calories a day. And we’re not talking salads here. The guy’s a pig, and based on his diet alone, you’d expect he’d weigh a million pounds. But hitting the water has some kind of magical effect on the body, shaving everything off.
Once the quarter starts back up, I’ll resume regular weight training, and see how that gels with swimming for fitness. Maybe all the water training will enable me to push past the massive plateau effect I’ve been stuck on on the bench press for the last eternity. My goal is still to press 200lbs…
One thing’s for sure, you aren’t gonna find me running on the treadmills very often from now on O_O It would be like an air force switching from Stealth Fighters back to Sopwith Camels. I wish someone had told me about this when I was, like, 16 
Better late than never, I guess… in fact, that’s just another bonus the pool holds over the gym. You could be an 80 year old woman and still swim for fitness and get tons of benefits. The pool does not discriminate…
If you’ve got a pool at your apartment or at your university gym or somewhere, don’t let it just sit there! That water is begging you to jump in! I heard that pool bad-mouthing your mom, you’d better get in there and kick the crap out of it! Seriously, though… I cannot praise the pool too highly.
FURTHER READING
The Plateau Effect
Progressive Training
30-Day Workout-A-Day Challenge Completed!