How swimming lessons help with other sports and improve performance
Most people don’t know this little secret—but swimming lessons can help kids perform well in other sports. But not just kids: swimming lessons can improve performance in sports for people of all ages, including professional athletes. 
Swimming has many health-and-fitness benefits and helps build coordination skills. With regular swimming lessons, your child will find other sports easier and more fun. And that means they’re more likely to participate in them, rather than avoiding them if they are embarrassed about their skill level.
Find out how swimming lessons help with other sports and improve performance in our article below.
What are the benefits of swimming for other sports?
Swimming lessons are perfect for improving your ability and performance in other sports. That’s because regular swimming increases your lung capacity and cardiovascular health. And, in turn, this improves your endurance and stamina in other sports.
It’s a little known fact that many professional athletes use swimming training in their exercise program. That’s because they understand the benefits: it increases their fitness levels and has a very low risk of injury. The last thing a professional athlete wants is to injure themselves during training and not be able to play. So swimming ticks a lot of boxes for them.
What sports does swimming help with?
Because swimming improves your endurance and stamina, it can help your performance in practically every sport, including:
- soccer
- tennis
- basketball
- netball
- rugby league and rugby union
- athletics
- gymnastics.
Swimming is also great for improving performance in non-competitive activities such as dance classes.
When should you do swimming lessons?
If your child has started a new sport, we’d recommend continuing with swimming lessons. Regular swimming lessons alongside weekly sporting activities can only improve performance and help your child enjoy playing sport.
It’s a good idea to carefully schedule swimming lessons and sports games to make sure your child doesn’t get worn out. We find that the best timing is to schedule both activities at the start of the week when they are still fresh and full of energy from the weekend, or to make sure there is at least one day break in between swimming and other sports to allow for recovery.
How swimming lessons encourage participation in other sports
Swimming lessons not only build fitness and improve endurance—they also build confidence. By participating in a relatively easy and non-competitive activity such as swimming, your child can gain confidence in themselves and their body. This fosters a positive attitude towards exercise and means your child is more likely to participate in sports at school.
When a child loses confidence in their ability, they may withdraw and want to stay inside and watch TV or play on an iPad. Obviously this doesn’t build healthy patterns, so if your child needs a break from playing sports, swimming lessons can be a great way to build up their confidence again.
Find out more about swimming lessons
If you’d like to know more about the swimming classes we offer at Hampton Swim School, contact us.