Swimming

Swimming is an amazing exercise that helps to burn calories, works out all your core muscles, and provides excellent cardio workout. 

But unless you're a multi-millionaire it can be challenging to find a pool in the city. Luckily Philadelphia has one of the great public pool systems in the nation. If you don't mind the happy kids, the old-timers, and the sometimes questionable water you can really enjoy a good outdoor swim in almost every neighborhood of Philadelphia. 

Where to find them:

The City of Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation (not to be confuseded with Pawnee Indiana’s Parks and Rec, great show!) is a great place to start looking for a pool. The website provides a complete list of every public pool in the city along with addresses and phone numbers. The phone numbers are important since due to budget cuts, thunderstorms, and, um, “children’s accidents”, all pools might not be open at all times. It’s safest to call ahead to make sure your pool will be open when you get there.

The complete list can be found here.

The best pool:

This might just be personal preference but my favorite pool in the city is called Carousel House. It’s special for being one of the few indoor pools administered by the city. Besides its wonderful name, Carousel house also has that beautiful indoor pool smell. Perhaps it was growing up on a swim team but the dank and damp smell of chlorine in an enclosed space really gets me ready to hop in a pool. I’m not kidding either, and we all know that smell. Even better, with so many people rather swimming outdoors in the heat, Carousel House is almost always empty except when it rains. For exercise though, an empty pool is absolutely perfect. Be sure to call ahead though or pick up a schedule since there are often swim meets and competitions occurring that close the pool down to public use. Also, bring a pair of flip-flops, it’s usually clean but public showers can get, eh, funky is the word I guess. Or just disgusting.

Happy swimming!

Take a Spin: Commuting as Exercise

We all know that going to the gym sucks. It’s always way too hot or way too cold and running while staring at the same four cinder blocks each day gets repetitive. So what can you do to vary you’re routine, keep exercise fresh, and keep motivated?

The best idea, especially in this great weather is to get outside. Philadelphia is filled with amazing places to get active and the City of Brotherly Love is getting more and more exercise friendly with each new bike lane and running path.

So let’s jump right in with my first tip. This is an obvious one but it’s the best way to get a little extra exercise in you’re day.

Fitting Biking Into Your Daily Routine
Get out the old bike. Philadelphia is a great city to ride a bike. Riding a bike has the obvious advantages of being low cost and having a low impact on the environment but it also can do wonders for everyday exercise.

All too often we take a bus, car, or subway to get even just a few blocks. A few trips to the supermarket on the bus are a huge waste of hours of exercise time. Riding just the mile or two back and forth from school to work can help to burn 200 - 300 calories. Since biking is a great low-intensity aerobic exercise it’s an easy activity to fit into you’re daily routine.

Biking Around the City
Although motorists and bikers in Philadelphia seem to be at constant odds, the introduction of bike lanes in the last decade has greatly improved the bikeability of the city.

The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, an advocacy group for the area, provides wonderful maps of bike lanes in the area on their website.

The group, which is a must join for cyclists in the city, also has meet-ups, provides tips, and delivers news about the ever changing city regulations on bike traffic.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting a few follow up posts as I use some of the bike paths that the Coalition has suggested.  In the mean time, try a few routes out for yourself, get active, and report any suggestions of your own in the comments below.

Happy cycling!