Get in the swim! You'll be in good company.

GET IN THE SWIM!

You'll Be in Good Company

In swimming, the arms and legs press rhythmically against a gentle, pleasant, nonviolent medium. The capacity of the heart and lungs increases every time you swim. Swimming is as American as Esther Williams and Johnny Weissmuller Some 83 million Americans -- 35 percent -- report themselves as recreational swimmers, and 20 million -- 8.5 percent --swim more than three times a week. They do it for fitness, for fun, and for competition. These people are in the fast lane to a long life, with quality health.

Today, few will deny that regular exercise is life prolonging. In a longitudinal study on the alumni of Harvard University, Dr. Ralph S. Paffenbarger showed that exercise and life span rise together. There must be some connection between the prominence of swimming in American life, and the longevity that Americans enjoy.

As a conditioning process by which a person actually gets somewhere in the water, swimming is pretty much a twentieth-century thing. A hundred years ago, swimming was not widespread. Then British pioneer John Trudgen developed the crawl stroke. Following improvements by Fred Cavill and his incredible Australian-born sons, swimming became both fast and popular. Duke Kahanamoku broke world records at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, charming Sweden's King Gustav V.

Hollywood brought Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, and a parade of Olympic swim stars to the silver screen. The Duke also popularized surfboarding and the beach luau. In a word, recreational swimming joined hands with social fun.

Swimming can do a lot for a person's social life. Consider these famous people: The Greek philosopher Plato said a person who couldn't swim wasn't educated! Alexander the Great was an opendistance sea swimmer, and Julius Caesar liked to tackle swift river currents. Charlemagne and Louis XI put France intot he royal swim, and Ben Franklin enjoyed his swim too much to mind when rowdies snitched his clothes from the riverbank. Franklin D. Roosevelt swam for fitness and physical rehabilitation; so did John F. Kennedy, once a Harvard varsity wave splitter. Ronald Reagan, swim team captain at Dixon High and swimmer-coach at Eureka College, seems a pretty durable fellow. One of Canada's former prime ministers, Pierre Trudeau, is a regular swimmer. Then there's Alan Ladd, swimmer and diving champ and ruggedly handsome screen star. The list goes on and on!

Jamison ("Jam") Handy was a turn-of-the-century swimming pioneer. Bemedaled at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, he developed the first swim-technique films and books. When he was well into his 70s he loved to challenge former Olympic swim stars to a race--he preferred them to be 30 to 40 years younger than he--and often beat them. Buster Crabbe, a freestyle gold medalist at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, later played the roles of Tarzan, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon in the movies. In his 70s he beat many a younger challenger in swimming matches.

Supporting the goodness of swimming are solid, scientific facts. Life-prolonging fitness exercise begins with cardiovascular endurance. In swimming, the arms and legs press rhythmically against a gentle, pleasant, nonviolent medium. The capacity of the heart, blood vessels, and lungs to deliver nutrients and oxygen to the tissues, and to remove wastes, increases after every time you swim. With each session, there is less of that stinging feeling in the chest that is the body's plea for better oxygen exchange, and the achy feeling in the arms and legs that is the muscles' plea for better blood supply.

How many Americans are into organized programs in swimming fitness? There are: * 1,500,000 summer league swimmers * 500,000 YMCA/YWCA swimmers * 750,000 high school and college

swimmers * 125,000 U.S. Swimming, Inc.,

age-group swimmers. Add to these the additional thousands who swim with the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, Boys' Clubs/Girls' Clubs of America, U.S. Long Distance Swimming Association, U.S. Triathlon, U.S. Diving, Inc. (yes, divers train by swimming, too!), Red Cross Lifesaving and Water Safety Instructor programs, junior high and high school physical education classes, armed forces water survival training, and competition swimming leagues. You can begin to see why * More than 50 percent of all U.S. gold

medal Olympians are swimmers

and divers. * U.S. athletes have captured more

than half of all Olympic aquatics

medals (more than three times

the second-ranked nation). * More movie actors and actresses

have come from U.S. swim

programs than from any other

athletic background. * America is the world's only nation

where the home swimming pool

is a nonremarkable middle-class

amenity. * Swimwear is the largest fashion

designation within the sports

clothing industry.

Swimming is unique among sports in that it produces no injuries. On the contrary, it is a rehabilitation system for polio, spinal damage, cranial damage, developmental disorders, and more.

Near the end of the nineteenth century, Australia's Annette Kellerman suffered from muscular atrophication resulting from about with polio. For her therapy she swam -- and became the world's first professional female swimmer. Too early for Olympic competition, she toured America with a vaudeville aquatics show and made a smash-hit silent film, The Million Dollar Mermaid.

In 1917, Ethelda Bleibtrey of New York found her body crippled from polio and decided to fight back, a la Kellerman. In 1920, at Antwerp, Ethelda won all three women's Olympic swimming events in world record times. She also spent a night in jail. She did that in order to strike down, in court, an archaic New York law that prohibited women from "exposing the lower extremities" at the beach.

"Swimming is the best sport in the world for a woman," Ethelda told a reporter. "When a girl indulges in basketball, tennis, or golf, she is all tired out at the close of the game. But after a girl has had a good swim, she feels relaxed and cool. Her muscles are in order, and her whole makeup, both physical and mental, is at rest and at peace with the world."

No one has ever said it better or done it better. Sixty years later, Dr. Eduardo Hoy published his landmark study on America's women Olympic swimmers. By every quality standard, they are among the longitudinally healthiest women in the world. Possibly the Esther Williams films in the 1950s had already convinced many people, for Esther was a triple champion; she surely would have taken a medal in the canceled Olympic Games of 1940. But Dr. Hoy's study puts the medical stamp of certainly upon the idea.

Fitness swimming in the prime-time years: * Keeps you among the young folks--and

that's fun! * Gets the whole family into

swimming. * Takes you to the fun social sites:

beaches, pools, rivers, lakes,

islands, and ponds. * Makes you drownproof, whereas

some fitness sports can actually

injure you. * Lets you do a little exercise or a lot. * Is always clean and refreshing.

Thanks to club and municipal pools, school and institutional pools, plus the abundance of natural waterfronts, any American who wants to can swim. Do you have back or heart trouble? Of course, you should see your physician before you swim. Hundreds of physicians are swimmers; dozens of competitive swimmers have become physicians. Usually, your doctor will prescribe a swimming regimen to help you, which may even mean that your pool costs can be covered by your health insurance.

Many a swimmer has saved his or her own life and the lives of others in boating mishaps. Both Ethelda Bleibtrey and Duke Kahanamoku performed heroic rescues of drowning persons, in separate incidents, and refused public recognition for their actions.

"Anybody would've done it," said Ethelda.

"I just happened to be right there," shrugged the Duke.

Consider the warm glow of fitness that comes from swimming in cool, soft water. It is a feeling known by all who experience the exhilaration that comes after you swim a few laps. You feel good all day. But you also want to swim again the next day.

To "get into the swim" yourself, check the swimming program at your local YMCA/YWCA or other local health club. Soon you can be swimming your way to a healthy 80, 90, or even 100 years of age. And you will have the prime time of your life while you do it!

Russell W. Ramsey, Ph.D., is professor of natioanal security affairs at Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama.