One of the best ways you can develop a healthy body is with consistent exercise.
But when exercising, it does not just have to be the one that drains your energy excessively.
This often leads to questions like is it harder to swim or run.
Realistically, it is much harder to swim than run due to things like the level of training required in order to swim and the risk involved in swimming like drowning.
But when it comes to a sport like running, anybody can run as far as you have functional legs.
This is not so with swimming as you have to make sure that you are trained on how to swim first before you can choose swimming as an exercise.
This is to help avoid casualties like drowning when you swim.
Why Swimming Is Harder Than Running
1) Swimming Requires More Experience
One of the things that makes it harder to swim than run has to do with how quickly you can start engaging in the sport.
When it comes to swimming, not everybody can start on the go.
This is because before you swim, you have to know how to swim.
This requires training before you can swim.
But when it comes to other sports like running, the case is very different.
With running, you basically require no training or experience before you can run.
With just a pair of functional legs, anybody can swim.
This makes it great for someone to easily run anytime.
But when it comes to swimming, no matter how physically fit you may be, it is not a guarantee that you will easily swim.
To swim, you need to be trained if you have no knowledge of how to swim.
2) Swimming Is More Risky For a Novice Than Running
Everyday, there are cases of casualties being recorded when swimming in an open water.
Some are minor while others are usually major casualties.
This spans across casualties like contacting an infection to worse casualties like drowning.
In worse casualty cases like drowning, a loss of life occurs to the swimmer.
This occurrence of casualties when swimming is always higher with a novice swimmer.
But when it comes to running, the level of casualty sustained is rarely fatal.
This cuts across amateur and professional runners.
This is one of the things that makes it difficult to swim than run.
To reduce the risk involved when swimming, it is always advised for novice swimmers to limit themselves to the shallow part of a water body.
With this, they can be easily rescued if there is a casualty.
But irrespective of this, it does not stop casualties that might occur due to an infected water.
This is because as a novice, mistakenly drinking a pool water is common.
In such a case where you drink an infected pool water, this can lead to a lot of health casualties which can become fatal if not handled well.
3) Swimming Takes More Energy To Reach a Long Destination
If you want to measure how hard it is to swim as compared to running, one of the things you have to do is engage in both of them.
You can start with any of it.
In doing this, you have to choose a particular distance you want to cover.
This may be a distance that is above or below 50m.
First, have to set the time you want to complete that race.
After that, swim from your start point to your destination.
After you have finished swimming, then try to run across the same 50m and look at the difference in the two task.
One of the common things you are going to observe after finishing this comparison is that swimming will require more energy before you can reach your destination.
This drains your energy more as compared to running across the same distance.
This is why swimming is harder than running.
4) Movement Resistance Is Higher In Swimming
In anything about movement, resistance has to be overcome before a movement can take place.
This resistance to motion comes in different forms depending on the medium of movement.
Some of the resistance to motion will be low while some will be high.
When you are swimming, the resistance you will have to overcome before you move your body in the water is very high.
This takes a lot of energy from you if you are swimming speedily.
But when it comes to running, the level of resistance to movement that you face is very low when compared to that of swimming.
This is due to the difference in the density that exist in water and in air.
When it comes to swimming, water is used as a medium of movement.
Water has a density that is higher when compared to the density of air.
This density acts like a resistance to the movement of the swimmer.
To be able to swim, you have to make sure that you create a force or thrust in order to overcome the resistance from this density.
This makes it harder to swim.
But when you look at running, the resistance to movement that you will face is basically air.
The density of air when compared to that of water is very low.
This makes the resistance of movement when running very low when compared to that of swimming.
5) Swimming Requires More Finance Than Running
Engaging in sporting activities might be pleasurable but sometimes there is a bitter part attached to it.
This bitter part may be the risk involved in the sport or the cost of engaging in the sport.
Some sports are more expensive to engage in than some.
Take example playing golf.
Playing golf is one of the most expensive sport that you can engage in.
This is due to the cost of the golf equipments and other recurrent cost.
This is also seen when you compare the cost of swimming to running.
Swimming is always more expensive to engage in.
This is due to the cost you are going to encounter like the pool fee.
But when it comes to running, you barely spend on other fees apart from your running shoes and clothes.
6) Running Is Faster Than Swimming
If two people engage in swimming and running across a particular distance, they will all arrive at different time.
The first person that will likely arrive at the stop point is the runner.
This is because of the resistance to movement that has to be overcome before movement sets in.
In swimming, the resistance to movement is very high due to the density of water.
But when it comes to that of running, the resistance to movement is air.
Air is very light when compared to water.
This makes a runner to move faster than someone that is swimming towards a particular destination.
7) Bad Resting Point When Swimming Long Distance
Another thing that makes it harder to swim than run has to do with ease of rest while sporting especially in a long distance.
When you are sporting across a long distance, some people may not be able to move from start to finish without resting.
This is always due to the fatigue that sets in while sporting.
In some sports, it is easy to relax and build up some energy.
But how can you do this if you are in a large water body when you are swimming across a long stretch like one mile.
This is one of the things that makes people drown in the water when their energy cannot carry them again.
To take a break, you may have to swim to the shores of the water body.
But if it is running, you can easily stop and rest then move again.
Further Reading
Is It Good For Swimmers To Run