Swimming and Perimenopause: Why So Many Women Return to the Water

The Pool as a Perimenopause Ally

There is something about water that draws women back during midlife. Gyms get crowded. Running starts to hurt your knees. The intensity of boot camp classes begins to feel like it costs more than it gives back. But the pool offers something different: movement without the grinding impact, cardiovascular work without overheating, and a sensation of freedom in the body that many women have not felt since childhood.

Swimming is having a quiet renaissance among midlife women, and the reasons make perfect physiological sense. As perimenopause changes how joints feel, how hot the body runs, and how long it takes to recover from strenuous exercise, the water provides a uniquely forgiving environment where all of those challenges become more manageable. You can work hard in a pool without pounding your joints. You can raise your heart rate without overheating. You can recover from a session faster than an equivalent land-based workout, often because the hydrostatic pressure of water reduces inflammation and supports circulation in the limbs.

If you swam as a child or young adult and drifted away from it over the years, you are not starting from zero. Muscle memory for swimming strokes is remarkably persistent. Getting back in the water for the first time in years tends to feel more familiar than expected, and progress rebuilding fitness happens quickly once you have consistency.

How Water Protects Your Joints

Joint pain is one of the most commonly reported and least discussed symptoms of perimenopause. Estrogen has anti-inflammatory properties and helps maintain the cartilage and synovial fluid that cushion joints. As estrogen declines, many women notice aches in the hips, knees, shoulders, and hands that feel disproportionate to their age or activity level. For these women, land-based impact exercise can feel like something to manage rather than enjoy.

Water reduces your effective body weight through buoyancy. At chest depth, water supports roughly 75 percent of your body weight, meaning your joints carry only about 25 percent of the load they would on land. This makes swimming genuinely pain-free for many women who find land-based exercise uncomfortable. The water also provides even resistance in all directions, so the muscles around joints are challenged and strengthened without the asymmetrical pounding of running or jumping.

For women with specific joint conditions like knee osteoarthritis or hip pain, swimming often allows them to maintain cardiovascular fitness and muscle conditioning during periods when other activities are not accessible. Physical therapists frequently recommend pool-based exercise in exactly these situations, not as a lesser substitute for real exercise but as an effective modality in its own right. The strength and flexibility built in water transfers meaningfully to daily function on land.

The Natural Cooling Effect on Hot Flashes

Hot flashes happen when the hypothalamus perceives a rise in core body temperature and triggers a heat-dump response. During exercise on land, body temperature rises steadily, which means hot flash triggers can accumulate during a workout. For women with frequent or severe hot flashes, this can make some types of exercise feel punishing, you are already running hot and exercise makes it worse before it gets better.

Swimming reverses this dynamic. The water surrounding your body acts as a constant heat exchange, drawing warmth away from your skin and keeping your core temperature lower than it would be during land-based exercise at the same cardiovascular intensity. Many women with significant hot flash burden find that swimming is the one form of vigorous exercise that does not trigger or worsen flashes during or immediately after the session.

The post-exercise cooling effect also matters. After a run or spin class, body temperature remains elevated for some time after stopping, which can trigger additional hot flashes in the recovery window. After swimming, core temperature normalizes much faster because the body has been continuously cooled throughout the session. For women whose exercise choices have been constrained by hot flash reactivity, swimming opens up a path to consistent vigorous activity that other modalities sometimes cannot.

Cardiovascular Benefits Worth Understanding

Swimming is a complete cardiovascular workout. It challenges the heart and lungs, improves VO2 max, reduces resting heart rate over time, and lowers blood pressure with consistent training. These are the same cardiovascular adaptations you would gain from running or cycling, achieved through a mode of exercise that is gentler on the body in other ways.

For perimenopausal women, cardiovascular health is not an abstract concern. Estrogen has a protective effect on the cardiovascular system, helping maintain healthy cholesterol profiles and arterial flexibility. As estrogen declines, cardiovascular risk increases, and the window for building protective habits becomes more urgent. Regular aerobic exercise is one of the most powerful interventions for maintaining cardiovascular health through this transition, and swimming provides that stimulus in a form that many women find enjoyable enough to sustain long term.

Swimming also engages the upper body musculature more than most common forms of cardio, which provides a different training stimulus. Pulling through the water works the latissimus dorsi, rear deltoids, rhomboids, and biceps in ways that running and cycling do not. For women who do primarily lower body cardio, adding swimming provides a more balanced cardiovascular and muscular challenge without requiring a gym or weights.

Getting Back in the Pool After Years Away

If you have not swum regularly in years, walking into a pool facility and getting back in the water can feel intimidating. The lanes, the caps, the proper technique you have partially forgotten: it is easy to talk yourself out of it before you start. But the re-entry process is far more forgiving than it feels from the outside.

Start with shorter sessions, even 20 minutes, and focus on comfortable, sustainable effort rather than speed or distance. The freestyle stroke is the most efficient for general fitness, but breaststroke and backstroke are equally valid and often more comfortable for women with shoulder sensitivity. Give yourself several weeks to rebuild efficiency in the water before worrying about structured training.

Most public pools offer lane swimming during designated hours, with lanes marked by pace so faster swimmers and slower swimmers are not in each other's way. Many also offer adult swimming lessons, which are a genuinely worthwhile investment if your technique feels shaky. A few lessons with an instructor can dramatically improve your efficiency in the water, making sessions less effortful and more enjoyable. Aqua fitness classes, which combine swimming pool environments with structured movement done in the water rather than lap swimming, are another accessible entry point that many women prefer for the social element.

Open Water Swimming as Community and Mental Health Practice

Indoor pool swimming is excellent training, but open water swimming has attracted a passionate community of midlife women who describe it in terms that go well beyond fitness. Wild swimming, as it is sometimes called in the UK, involves swimming in natural bodies of water: lakes, rivers, the sea. Cold water swimming specifically has seen dramatic growth in popularity, partly because of research suggesting that cold water immersion reduces inflammation, improves mood, and may support thyroid function.

The community aspect of open water swimming is real and significant. Groups of women who meet regularly to swim outdoors together form close bonds forged from shared vulnerability and shared joy. For women experiencing the isolation that can accompany perimenopause symptoms, particularly if symptoms affect social confidence or energy levels, these communities provide connection alongside exercise.

The mental health research on cold water immersion is still early but promising. Cold water activates the sympathetic nervous system briefly, followed by a pronounced parasympathetic rebound, the rest-and-digest response, that many swimmers describe as a profound calm and sense of well-being lasting hours after the swim. Some small studies have found reductions in anxiety and depression symptoms with regular cold water exposure. If you are curious about open water swimming, starting with a guided group swim or a supervised outdoor swimming spot gives you the experience with appropriate safety support.

Building a Swimming Routine That Fits Your Life

The biggest barrier to swimming is logistical rather than physical. You need access to a pool or open water, you need to transport yourself and your gear, and the post-swim shower routine adds time to an already busy day. These are real friction points, and they are worth problem-solving deliberately.

Many women find that treating pool sessions as non-negotiable appointments in their schedule, blocking the time in advance and preparing their swim bag the night before, reduces the day-of resistance. Keeping a shower kit permanently in the swim bag removes one decision from the morning of. Choosing a pool facility that is close to work or on a route you already travel reduces the travel friction.

For frequency, two to three pool sessions per week provides sufficient cardiovascular stimulus to see real benefits. Each session should be at least 30 minutes in the water to allow a warm-up, a main set, and a cool-down. If you are pairing swimming with strength training, keep them on separate days when possible to allow full recovery from each modality. Over time, as your comfort in the water grows, you can add variety through interval training, different strokes, or longer sessions, keeping the training fresh and the adaptations continuing.

What Swimming Cannot Do Alone

Swimming is exceptional for cardiovascular fitness, joint health, and mental well-being. However, it is not weight-bearing, which means it does not provide the mechanical stimulus needed to maintain and build bone density. For women in perimenopause who are concerned about bone health, swimming works best when combined with weight-bearing activity like walking, hiking, or strength training.

Similarly, swimming does not build the kind of muscle mass that protects against the metabolic changes of perimenopause as effectively as resistance training does. It provides muscular endurance and some hypertrophy, particularly in the upper body, but is not a direct substitute for progressive strength training for women managing sarcopenia risk during hormonal transition.

Thinking of swimming as a cornerstone of your cardiovascular conditioning, paired with two days of strength training and daily walking, creates a well-rounded perimenopause exercise plan that addresses bone health, muscle preservation, cardiovascular fitness, and joint protection together. The PeriPlan app can help you track your weekly workouts across all of these modalities so you can see whether your routine is balanced and consistent over time.

Medical Disclaimer

The information in this article is for general educational purposes and does not constitute medical advice. If you have a history of cardiovascular disease, joint conditions, ear or sinus issues, or skin sensitivities that may be affected by pool chemicals or cold water, consult with your healthcare provider before starting a swimming program. Open water swimming carries additional safety considerations including temperature, currents, and distance from shore. Always swim in designated areas, with appropriate supervision, and ideally with a companion when swimming outdoors. This article does not diagnose, treat, or prevent any health condition.