Fitness: Deep Dive

DEEP DIVE

Swimming is good for the body and soul.

by Patricia Markert photography by Asphalt Green

IF YOU’RE A SWIMMER with a habit of doing laps, what’s there to do with the pools closed? Could you try running? For people with arthritis, that may be too hard on the joints. Walking is good, especially along the river’s edge in Battery Park, where gardeners take care of beautifully landscaped gardens, but for diehard swimmers, it just isn’t the same. But this past October, Asphalt Green’s pool re-opened in Battery Park, offering a welcome workout that surpasses every other form of exercise. What is it about swimming?

In Bonnie Tsui’s book, Why We Swim, she gives five reasons why swimming is a uniquely valuable activity. These include survival, wellbeing, community, competition, and flow. If you fall into water, you had better know how to swim, or risk drowning. In Tsui’s book, she tells the story of an Icelandic hero whose amazing feat was so dramatic, the whole of Iceland now reenacts his famous swim each year to honor him. Gulli Fridporsson survived a shipwreck that sank his fishing vessel and killed all of his fellow crew members. He alone swam to safety in 40-degree water for over three miles. It turns out his body was adapted like a seal’s, with an extra layer of fat, which prevented him from succumbing to hyperthermia. In Tsui’s book, we also learn that during a stay in London, Benjamin Franklin swam daily in the Thames. Swimming was prescribed as a water cure back in his day, and was suggested to help improve the lungs and prevent constipation. Others who relied on swimming for therapy include Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, two men who both suffered from physical ailments that were alleviated by daily workouts in the water.

Swimming is also easier as one ages, since it reduces the pain of arthritis, and “improves healthy circulation of blood around the body to the damaged parts that need it—even more than running or cycling …and without the pain.” When he was a child afflicted with ADHD, Olympian Michael Phelps said, “being in the pool slowed down my mind.”

Swimming can also lower blood pressure by making the heart and lungs work harder. According to Dr. Hirofumi Tanaka, director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas, swimming “stimulates mobility –without pain—and circulation.” Meanwhile, some of the other notables who swam every day include Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who was often able to gain inspiration while swimming. Henry David Thoreau swam in Walden pond every morning, “as a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did.” Swimming combines the benefits of regular breathing not unlike the relaxation that comes from meditation, along with aerobic exercise and deep focus. It turns out, swimming and water immersion make you feel good. Tsui says, “In this year of sorrow, plunging into the ocean or pool or lake has been essential for me — it is momentary relief, forgetting and unburdening. Immersion is cleansing and conducive to play, even when things are heavy. Our dopamine levels rise, our metabolisms rev up.”

Here in Lower Manhattan, one of the most iconic images of swimming pools turns up in Raging Bull, when Jake LaMotta finds Vicki at the Carmine Street Pool and falls in love. That same pool, now part of the renamed Tony Dapolita Recreation Center, is free and open to swimmers during the summer months. The rest of the year, an indoor pool offers reasonable membership fees and early morning hours. When pandemic regulations are over and done with, in Manhattan alone there are thirteen recreation centers; however, all New York City Recreation Centers, including the pools, are currently closed to the public. Dapolito’s center also offers after-school student care options. Other notable pools downtown for lap swimmers include Stuyvesant High School and Borough of Manhattan Community College Pool. Let’s hope they reopen soon! In the meantime, Asphalt Green awaits.

“Water has long been a form of healing. For so many of us, it’s a restorative, an antidote for depletion and depression,” shares Tsui. Everybody into the pool! DT