A male competitive swimmer's body is often touted as the perfect body for men. If you look at the physique of these swimmers, all of them have wide broad shoulders, solid 6 pack abs, powerful arms and legs, V-shaped chiseled chest and back. Is it any wonder why competitive swimmers have such attractive bodies?
So how can we get such an ideal male body shape? By spending most of your life in the swimming pool? Of course not. This is one of the most common misconceptions about building the male swimmers physique. Getting the ideal body shape of a swimmer is not by swimming everyday.
Although swimming is one of the best low impact exercises, it is not how their body type is achieved. In fact, you can even get that magnificent male physique without ever stepping into the pool if you want, but by following a structured exercise and nutritional program to achieve that goal. Unknown to many people, all competitive swimmers do sports specific weight training in the gym.
Although the answer may be simple, it is not as easy when put into practice, especially if you are not a fitness trainer or trained in the science of muscle development. However, it can be done. Here are some tips on how to achieve the male competitive swimmer's body.
The first thing to do is to lose weight or rather lose body fat so that your muscle tone and definition can be seen clearly and not buried under a layer of fat. A healthy and fit male should have about 15% of body fat. For competitive swimmers, their body fat may range from 6% to 18%. However, for your muscle definition to show clearly including showing off your taut 6 pack abs, you should strive for body fat percentage below 12%.
Genetically, the male body tends to store most of its fat above the waist. Since one of the more noticeable features of a swimmer's physique is the well shaped defined upper body, thus it is important for you to be more mindful of your body fat in that part of your physique.
All cardio workouts, right eating habit and weight training can help you to reduce overall body fat. You will never get the classic swimmer's body if your body fat percentage is high. So watch what you eat. In order to lose just one pound of body fat, you will need to create a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories and this and more can be achieved by a combination of diet and exercise. So keep yourself active with a solid commitment to your workout program and you will see results sooner rather than later.
Look, most people think that to get rid of belly fat, you need to do plenty of sit-ups and crunches. That is not true. When you diet and workout to lose body fat, the fat will come off from all over the body. But that is great, isn't it? We do want to get lean all over the body so that our muscle tone for the whole body can be seen, just like those of competitive male swimmer, don't we?
Next, train with weights regularly and intensively. You may have low body fat percentage, but if you do not have nice muscles to be seen, you will simply look scrawny, not to say having the great physique of a swimmer.
So in order for you to attain a swimmer's body, you should inculcate a combination of a good diet program, cardio workouts and weight training. Of course if you want to put swimming into the equation, by all means, go ahead!
Chris Chew is a fitness, health and relationship consultant. Read his free articles at
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