Strengthening Benefits of a Swimming Kickboard. Swimming is a great way for you to develop muscles in the hamstrings, calves, and quadriceps. You can further develop them when you choose to swim with a kickboard. When you swim with it, you can burn a lot of calories.
Kicking with a kickboard or in streamline will elevate your heart rate and lift caloric burn! This is a great activity for glutes, quads, and hamstrings and helps perfect kicking technique to improve overall swimming while also targeting specific areas of the body.
Pool workouts are great for staying fit and healthy. Adding kickboard exercises ramp up this gentle yet effective workout tool. In this instructional exercise video from SwimEx, see how to use a kickboard to engage the abdominals. The push-and-pull style exercise also encourages proper posture and stabilization.
Working with the kick board does work the hips and glutes along with your core muscles, but might not work the thighs that much, unless you do a breaststroke kick instead of flutter kicks.
For a moderate speed workout: Aim to do approximately 60 laps in a 25m pool in 30 minutes (1). For beginners: A realistic and achievable goal is to swim 20 to 30 laps within 30 minutes (2). For intermediate swimmers: Strive for 40 to 50 laps within 30 minutes (2).
If you're just starting out with swimming and are gradually increasing from low to high intensity, a moderate-intensity session for half an hour burns around 250 calories. If you do that 4 times a week, you can expect to lose roughly 1 pound a month [4].
You totally can! However, it should be noted that regular swimming doesn't specifically target belly fat. Rather, it burns any excess fat that your body has reserved for energy, regardless of whether this fat is located on your stomach, hips, thighs, or other parts of your body.
Swimming kickboards are designed to help improve kicking and swimming skills in the water. For new swimmers, kickboards can be used as a flotation device to stay buoyed while learning swim skills.
Training your leg muscles with swimming
Every swimming stroke trains the leg muscles: the kick is a part of everything you do in the water. But there's one stroke in particular that creates more work for your legs – and that's the breaststroke.
Workout 1: Kick Board Endurance Builder
Start by warming up with a few laps of easy swimming. Then, grab your kick board and kick continuously for 10 minutes, focusing on maintaining a steady pace. Take short breaks if needed, but aim to keep your legs moving throughout the entire duration.
What are the best ways to lose belly fat? Head down the pool to burn calories and target your tummy with specific strokes and exercises. Breaststroke, butterfly and backstroke all engage your core, length after length, while movements like water crunches give your abs a run for their money.
Strengthening Benefits of a Swimming Kickboard. Swimming is a great way for you to develop muscles in the hamstrings, calves, and quadriceps. You can further develop them when you choose to swim with a kickboard. When you swim with it, you can burn a lot of calories.
For fat burning, try the following swimming drill:
Swim four lengths, freestyle stroke, with just 15 seconds rest after each length. Next, move on to backstroke or alternate freestyle for 8 lengths, aiming to complete the entire 8 lengths in around 4 minutes.
Breaststroke and front crawl are great arm-toners. And the aerobic effects of swimming help you shed fat. Do pay attention to your diet. It's a two-way process - you reduce the fat that sits on top of the arm muscles by eating a low-fat diet, and tone the muscles underneath by exercising.
Breaststroke: This style of swimming involves specific movements with your legs that are great for losing thigh fat, especially if you do it right.
Ksebati and Lepinski say a good beginner or intermediate workout is 1,000-1,500m, or 20-30 laps, which should take about half an hour. Begin with a short warm-up – maybe a 4x50 at an easy pace – to get your heart rate up.
Leg Strength: Kicking with a kickboard helps develop leg strength, which is essential for propulsion in the water. Consistent practice can lead to stronger and more efficient kicking technique.
The primary advantage of using a kickboard is its ability to target and strengthen the lower body muscles. By isolating the legs and focusing on kicking movements, kickboard workouts engage the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and glutes.
Paddles make the surface area of your hand bigger so you propel more water with each pull-through. Propelling more water means you need to use more strength with each pull through. It's like switching to a higher gear on your bike while maintaining the same cadence.
Swimmers often carry more body fat than we might expect. This isn't just due to their training regimens; it's also a reflection of their need for buoyancy and energy reserves during long swim sessions.
Swimming is better for your brain than walking or running
Land-based exercise also has less impact on cognitive function than swimming. “There are many research studies showing that water immersion actually increases brain blood overall,” says Prof Tanaka.