Opinion

I don't care about what the doctor says - I'm sticking with swimming

Children swim during the German Championships in Mermaid swimming in the Ottilienbad in Suhl, Germany. Picture by Jens Meyer, Associated Press 
Children swim during the German Championships in Mermaid swimming in the Ottilienbad in Suhl, Germany. Picture by Jens Meyer, Associated Press  Children swim during the German Championships in Mermaid swimming in the Ottilienbad in Suhl, Germany. Picture by Jens Meyer, Associated Press 

SWIMMING is a "waste of time" for most people. That’s according to the GP who champions exercise for Public Health England.

Dr Dane Vishnubala told a conference that the average swimmer’s technique is so poor they simply splash through the water using a “doggy paddle hybrid” or spend their time chatting to friends. And swimming is not the best exercise for weight loss.

Dr Vishnubala said most swimmers are not able to maintain the intensity needed to allow them to drop a few pounds.

Far better, he told the UK’s largest gathering of family doctors, to go for a run, a walk or take a dance class.

Leaving aside that for many of us attending a dance class sounds like a waking nightmare, Dr Vishnubala’s conclusions left me feeling rather sad.

Like many of us I’ve been baffled by the often contradictory messages we receive about our health and well-being, usually on a daily basis.

There’s no doubt that obesity is a huge problem and is set to get worse. A survey by the Lancet medical journal in 2014 found that around a quarter of Irish adults were obese.

And last year a much-discussed document by the World Health Organisation found that within the next decade, Ireland is expected to become the most obese country in Europe. The predictions don’t look good.

Except different reports have suggested that living a sedentary lifestyle is twice as dangerous as being obese.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge tracked more than 334,000 people for 12 years and looked at the weight and activity levels of participants who died during that time.

They concluded that exercise could have saved twice as many people as weight loss.

Most of us work in offices which require us to sit down for long periods of time.

I used to work in several call centres where breaks, including toilet breaks, were strictly monitored and anyone seen away from their desk was usually asked why.

Although Dr Vishnubala was right to raise concerns that swimming won’t lead to weight loss for the average paddler, for many of us a visit to the local pool isn’t simply about losing weight.

Swimming isn't just exercise. That feeling of doing a few lengths, stretching out a body that's usually stuck in front of a computer, is pure joy.

Every time your fingers touch the wall, every time you turn and go back to do another length, feels like a little victory.

Some people like the smell of roses and verbena. Give me the distinctive whiff of leisure centre chlorine, mixed with rubber swimming caps, any day.

As a child there was no greater excitement than standing on the edge of the deep end and jumping into the water, or diving down to the bottom and seeing how long I could hold my breath.

Slipping into water is slipping into weightlessness. It feels like you’re being supported in a large, tepid, bath.

And under the water the shape and size of your body, or your age, or worries about home and work, are irrelevant.

All you need to focus on is moving your arms and legs while remembering to breathe.

It’s been a fairly dispiriting month, with a seeming avalanche of stories about Brexit and falls in the value of sterling and the distinct possibility that the next president of the United States is a man who has boasted about groping women.

Swimming for half an hour, even just once a week, makes increasingly disturbing news bulletins and life in general more manageable.

Swimming is also a great leveller. It’s a sad fact that my breaststroke will never be as efficient or graceful as the elderly woman with the flowery cap I wanted to emulate as a child.

But then the writer Anne Lamott has said that “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people”.

Being in the pool has taught me that what you do doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be done.

It’s important to know which exercise is best for weight loss, if in fact you really do need to lose the odd half a stone.

But sometimes the simple delight of pushing your body, just a little, gets lost.

Rather than worry we aren’t doing the right exercise in the right way, why not just get off the sofa?

It doesn’t matter what you do or how you do it. Now where are my goggles?