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Medals replace medicines for these ‘seniors’

As most of us put our alarms on snooze and snuggle into bed, a group
of 60 plus swimmers brave the winter to follow their passion.

Jay
Chandrasekharan’s skin has wrinkled over the past 32 years he has spent
swimming. His day starts at 3am. After doing yoga for an hour,
Chandrashekhar takes a bus from HAL 3rd Stage to Majestic and then takes
a bus to Sankey Tank to swim. His tryst with swimming started when he
suffered a slip disc and the doctors could not provide any answer for
his problems. That’s when he thought of improving his life. When asked
how he manages in the cold he said, “That’s all in your mind. Once you
are in the water you don’t feel anything.” Chandrashekhar has
participated in both national and state tournaments. And now his next
big dream is the English Channel. “We are preparing for that now. In
some swimming pools they put ice in the water so that our bodies get
acclimatised to the cold.”

This group of approximately 25 swimmers
have become a family now. They bond over swimming and find solace in
each other’s company. Even at the age of 70, these swimmers have no
health problems and joke among themselves that they are going to live
upto 150.

All of them have participated in state or national level
championships and bagged medals as well. Swimming has not only improved
their health but has given them friends for life. Says Jay, “This is my
family. If even one person doesn’t show up, we miss him, call him and
enquire why he didn’t come. We also go for trips occasionally and go for
breakfast every third Sunday of the month.”

They attribute all
their success to their coach Narasimha who represented India in 1979 in
Columbia in water polo and won a gold medal.

Another swimmer,
Mohan Rao L jumps right in the conversation. “I always used to swim as a
hobby but eventually tournaments came along and I thought, why not?”
For them, time has stopped as they describe age as just numbers.
“Instead of having medicines in our cupboards, we have medals,” they
sign off.

Interesting Facts About Swimming

• Going swimming is very relaxing and has been compared to yoga and meditation in terms of its soothing effect on the mind and body.

    •    Swimming is a good way to lose weight. This form of exercise will stimulate your entire body and could lead to an increase in metabolism over time. If you are trying to lose weight, swim for at least twenty minutes three or four times each week.

    •    Peanuts are a source of energy for swimmers.

    •    An hour of vigorous swimming will burn up to 650 calories. It burns off more calories than walking or biking.

    •    Swimming strengthens the heart and lungs.

• You can swim for exercise no matter what your age. Some people teach their infants and toddlers how to swim so that they will learn to love and respect the water at a very early age. I also know people well into their eighties who swim regularly to stay in shape.

• Swimming started in the 1st century.

• Swimming has been a part of the Olympics since 1896.

• Some people think swimming started when a person fell into the water and panicking, he started to swim in a way we call today dog paddle.

• Egyptians made a picture or symbol for swimming as far back as 2500 A.

    •    Drags slow you down in swimming because they are not skin tight.

    •    The shorter your hair is the more chance you have for swimming faster because there is less friction.

    •    Swimming can be done for competition and it is helpful in survival.

• Swimming works out all of the body’s major muscles

• Swimming help reduce stress

• Water’s buoyancy make swimming the ideal exercise for physical therapy and rehabilitation or for anyone seeking a low-impact exercise.

• Swimming is a great cardiovascular exercise because you are moving against the water’s resistance, which is over ten times that of the air.

• An estimated 65 thousand people in the United States alone do not know how to swim. Many of them learned as young children but never go to a pool, lake, river, or ocean anymore and have forgotten how to swim over the years. Others were never taught and continue to avoid the activity altogether. It was once thought that knowing how to swim was important for safety reasons, but now it is pretty much left up to the individual.

    •    Swimming in extremely cold water can be very dangerous. People with heart conditions or other ailments, as well as elderly people, should avoid swimming in water that is too cold. Cold water cools down the human body 25 times faster that cold air does, so swimming in water that is below about 15 degrees Celsius should never be undertaken. This can lead to thermal shock, hypothermia, and eventual death.

    •    Swimming is also a very safe form of exercise because it is considered to be low impact and easy on the bones and joints. You can do exercises in the water using floats and weights and enjoy a good workout without worrying about serious injury. This is especially true if you have arthritis or other types of physical limitations.

    •    It really is true that you shouldn’t swim for about an hour after eating. This is primarily because your body is digesting your food and you may get a cramp during the time right after you eat. Allow your body to rest after eating and then go into the water.

Quite Interesting facts about swimming

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. HERACLITUS

Aquatic apes

The ‘’aquatic ape hypothesis’’ suggests that eight million years ago an ancestor of modern humans lived a semi-aquatic lifestyle based on foraging for food in shallow waters. Fur not being an effective insulator in water, we lost ours, replacing it, as other aquatic mammals have, with relatively high levels of body fat. One attractive feature of this hypothesis is that it explains why we retained hair on top of our heads, particularly in females. Because we would have taken refuge from predators by wading deep into the water, our head hair would have given babies something to hold onto.

Ancient swimmers

There isn’t any fossil evidence for aquatic apes, but humans have been swimming for at least 10,000 years. That’s when the rock painting images in ‘’the cave of swimmers’’ near Wadi Sura in south-western Egypt were painted. There are depictions of swimming in art from the early Minoan, Incan and Babylonian empires. The Egyptians, Persians and Greeks were all keen swimmers: Plato said anyone who couldn’t swim lacked a proper education. The Japanese were holding competitive swimming galas in 36BC. Medieval English knights swam in armour as one of the ‘’seven agilities’’. The scholar Everard Digby (executed in 1606 as a Gunpowder Plotter) wrote A short Introduction for to learnne to Swimme in 1595. He said men swam better than fish because they could move forward, backward, on their sides and upside down.

Club swimmers

A century ago Britain was full of outdoor swimming clubs: the Tadpoles, the Sheep’s Green Swimmers, the Highgate Diving Club. After the Second World War chlorinated swimming pools meant lido culture faded, but Hampstead, Brighton and the Serpentine still have active clubs. The Serpentine’s green water is fed by a natural well: the green plants and algae keep it clean. Piscine, French for swimming pool, comes from the Latin piscine, which means fishpond.

Diving

The first diving board in England was set up at Highgate Ponds in 1893 and it became an Olympic sport in 1904. The first divers were Swedish and German gymnasts who preferred practising with landings in the water rather than on a hard floor.

Crawling

Doggy paddle was the first human stroke: newborn babies perform it instinctively. Breaststroke was the first of the four main strokes to be swum competitively. Front crawl made its UK debut in 1844 in London at a meeting that featured a number of American Indian swimmers. British swimmers thought the stroke and the splashing ‘’barbaric’’ and it wasn’t adopted by them until 1873.

Turning

The tumble turn was also invented by an American: Tex Armstrong, the coach who was training Adolph Keifer (1918-) for the 1936 Olympics. Kiefer returned as champion and went on a world tour, challenging all comers. In 2,000 races he lost only twice.

Swimming with a tache

Captain Matthew Webb (1848-1883) made the first unaided crossing of the English Channel in 1875 using breaststroke. His course was so erratic he swam 39 miles – twice the direct distance. He became a national hero but died attempting to swim the Whirlpool Rapids below Niagara Falls.
The mustachioed picture of him on the England’s Glory matchbox was used by Peter Sellers as the inspiration for his portrayal of Inspector Clouseau.

Fun Facts

Swimming and Pool Trivia To Share with Friends

    •    Elephants can swim as many as 20 miles a day — they use their trunks as natural snorkels!
    •    The bikini swimsuit was named after a U.S. nuclear testing site in the South Pacific called Bikini Atoll.
    •    65% of people in the U.S. don’t know how to swim.
    •    The average person produces 25,000 quarts of saliva in his or her lifetime — that’s enough spit to fill TWO swimming pools!
    •    In butterfly stroke and breaststroke, swimmers need to touch the pool with both hands simultaneously when they finish. Swimmers touch the pool with only one hand when they finish in freestyle and backstroke swimming events.
    •    The most popular freestyle stroke is the crawl, considered the fastest stroke.
    •    More than 50 years later, the home or residential swimming pool is ubiquitous and even the smallest world nations enjoy a thriving swimming pool industry (e.g. New Zealand pop. 4,116,900 [Source NZ Census 7 March 2006] - with 65,000 home swimming pools and 125,000 spa pools).
    •    The slowest Olympic swim stroke is the breaststroke.
    •    The fastest and most efficient swim stroke is the crawl/ freestyle.
    •    The turbopump on the Space Shuttle main engine is powerful enough to drain an average-sized swimming pool in 25 seconds.
    •    Most swimmers at the highest levels of competition train from four to five hours per day and five to seven days per week. They will typically swim about six to twelve miles per day along with weight training and flexibility training.
    •    The Olympics are swum in a 50 meter pool or long course pool. Pools used by the NCAA and high school swimming programs can be 25 yards to 25 meters. These pools are called short course pools.
    •    An Olympic size pool depending on its size (50 meters X 25 yards or meters) can hold from 700,000 to 850,000 gallons of water.
    •    Competitive swimmers use the term fast pool when they are describing a pool that has a good gutter system on the sides. This system allows the water to flow out easily and doesn’t allow waves to bounce back to the middle of the pool. The lane lines can also help control the waves and the deeper the pool is, the fewer waves hit the bottom and bounce back up to the surface. The lack of these waves provides less drag/ resistance for the swimmers, which gives them a faster time.
    •    Florida is the only state with legislation on who can teach swimming. Life guards and swimming instructors must, by law, be certified.
    •    As with any other type of exercise you need to stay hydrated while swimming and you need to drink water. Your core body temperature can rise as the activity increases. Your body also produces sweat as it does with other physical activity, but it is not as apparent since you are already wet.
    •    Studies shown that the shark is fast in the water but not naturally hydrodynamic. The shark’s quickness is attributed to V shaped ridges on its skin called dermal tentacles. These ridges decrease dray and turbulence around the shark’s body, allowing more efficiency. The result of these studies has brought a brand new fabric to the market for competitive swim wear. Speedo has produced a fabric that emulates shark’s skin. This fabric reduces drag and turbulence around the body, which helps a swimmer pass through the water more effectively. The suits made from the “Fast skin” fabric have only been on the market for a little while but are already changing the look of competitive swimming and its results.

Historical Facts

    •    The oldest form of stroke used is the breaststroke.
    •    Ancient drawings and paintings found in Egypt depicting people swimming date back to 2500 BCE.
    •    Swim fins were invented by Benjamin Franklin.
    •    Swimming became an amateur sport in the late part of the nineteenth century.
    •    Swimming first became an Olympic event in 1896.
    •    Swimming in the Olympics started as a men’s event only but women were able to participate starting in 1912.
    •    The Deep Eddy Swimming Pool, built in 1915, is the oldest known concrete swimming pool and was built in Texas.
    •    After World War I and the departure of “Long John” style swimming costumes, interest in competitive swimming grew. Standards improved and training became essential.
    •    The first woman to swim the English Channel is Gertrude Ederle, who was actually just a teenager at that time in 1926.
    •    Home swimming pools became popular in the USA after World War II and the publicity given to swimming sports by Hollywood films like Esther Williams Million Dollar Mermaid made a home pool a desirable status symbol.
    •    Actress Esther Williams popularized synchronized swimming when she starred in movies known as “aqua musicals” produced by MGM in the forties and fifties. Aqua musicals were about synchronized swimming.
    •    In 1956, the US National Swimming Pool Institute was founded. It was later renamed to the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals, and now develops pool construction standards and provides training to pool builders and service technicians.
    •    President Gerald Ford had the outdoor swimming pool built at the White House in 1975. In 1976, a pool house was added — with a secret, underground passage that let’s the First Family and their guests to get from the White House to the pool without going outside.
    •    Synchronized swimming first appeared in the Olympics during the 1984 games.

Records and Firsts

    •    The first recorded swimming races were held in Japan in 36 B.C.
    •    The first man to cross the English Channel swimming from England to France is Englishman Captain Matthew Webb in 1875.
    •    The first swimming pool to go to sea on an ocean liner was installed on the White Star Line’s Adriatic in 1907.
    •    In the USA, the Racquet Club of Philadelphia clubhouse (1907) boasts one of the world’s first modern above-ground swimming pools.
    •    The oldest known concrete swimming pool — the Deep Eddy Swimming Pool — was built in Texas in 1915.
    •    The Titanic was the first ocean liner to have a swimming pool and a gym.
    •    Mark Spitz was the first Olympic swimmer to win seven gold medals in a single Olympiad in the 1972 games.
    •    The largest swimming pool ever built was reputedly created in Moscow after the Palace of Soviets remained uncompleted. The foundations were converted into an open air swimming pool after the process of de-Stalinisation after the fall of communism, Christ the Saviour Cathedral was re-built (it had originally been on the site) between 1995 and 2000.
    •    In the 21st century, there seem to be many contenders for “the largest swimming pool on earth”, reputedly at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh; at Club Med Camarina, Sicily; Sunlite Pool, Coney Island, Cincinnati; and Garden City, Kansas with their 220 foot by 330 foot pool (67m x 100m) that holds 26,000,000 gallons (100 million litres) of water. A recent construction in Tokyo, Japan may top them all.
    •    The longest swimming pool is the Orthlieb Pool in Casablanca, Morocco. It is 480 meters (1,574 feet) long and 75 meters (246 feet) wide. It is filled with sea water and covers 8.9 acres (3.60 Ha).
    •    The recreational diving center Nemo 33 near Brussels, Belgium is home to the world’s deepest swimming pool. The pool has two large flat-bottomed areas at depth levels of 5m (16 ft) and 10m (32 ft), and a large circular pit descending to a depth of 33m (108 ft).
    •    The Fleishhacker Pool was the largest swimming pool in the United States. Opened on 23 April 1925, it measured 300 m by 45 m (1,000 ft by 150 ft) and was so large that the lifeguards required kayaks for patrol. It closed in 1971 due to low patronage.
    •    According to the Guinness World Records the largest swimming pool in the world is San Alfonso del Mar Seawater pool in Algarrobo, Chile. It is 1,013 m (3,324 ft) long and has an area of 8 ha (19.77 acre), it was completed in December 2006.
    •    The first filtration system for a swimming pool was introduced in 1910.
    •    The first photo finish for a swimming competition was done in 1939.
    •    The first swimmer to break the two minute barrier in the 200 meters was Don Schollander.