 In summer plunging in seems logical, even mandatory. In winter it can seem daunting, even though the water is heated to a tepid, if not inviting level. So get into swimming now, while the weather plays along.
Swimming can become a hypnotic form of exercise that burns calories, trimming away extra inches and putting them back in all the right places.
Swimming's allure is probably a combination of many factors: you can't speak or be spoken to while swimming lengths, so if your cellphone rings, tough.
There's a rhythmic, soothing white noise of your arms thudding into the water and - especially at first - the pounding of your heart, and the stripe on the bottom of the pool flows meditatively under you like a ribbon.
Best of all, swimming is easy on your body, irrespective of your age. Your joints will have an easier time swimming than any other activity at the gym. Swimming isn't a weight-bearing activity, so if you're concerned about bones density and osteoporosis, combine it with other exercise.
Legends and crazy poets aside, swimming is great exercise. But if it's all a little too solitary and meditative for you, try water aerobics.
Like swimming it's easy on the joints, but it's a real workout. The folk in the natty black golf shirts will give you a timetable. They'll also advise you on classes that would be good for arthritis sufferers.
Swimming is great if you're pregnant and kids love it, which is good because knowing how to swim can save a child's life.
There are really only two injuries you could pick up from swimming: swimmer's shoulder, an inflammation of the little sac around the shoulder joint, and swimmer's ear, inflammation caused by water in the ear. Both can be treated.
Tip:
- Swimming is a great way to end a workout. The ancient Greeks revered swimming and running as the two signs of a civilised man.
- If you get hooked on swimming you'll join literary greats such as Yeats, Browning, Shelley, Virginia Woolfe and Orson Welles (Yes, there are pools big enough to accommodate even him).
- You might even read Charles Sprawson's book The Haunts of the Black Masseur, where he visits the swimming haunts of these famous people.
- Take Lord Byron, that Olympic gold hedonist, who was obsessed with the Greek legend of Leander, a romantic sort who would swim across a fast-flowing, mile-wide strait called the Hellespoint each night to share intimate moments with a priestess named Hero. The Hellespoint is now called the Dardanelles Strait and Byron swam it in 1810.
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