Step off terra firma into a body of water and start swimming. There's no better way to take a load off, tone your muscles, and bolster your cardiovascular stamina.

Swimming is a great cardiovascular workout. It’s also a workout you can do without a lot of gear if you can find a body of water and the temperature is right.

There are four basic strokes: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle. Most recreational swimmers stick with freestyle, also known as the crawl. You can either swim laps in the pool or head for an ocean, lake, or any other body of water that's large enough and deep enough to submerge your body.

Swimming depends more on the upper body and core than the legs, making it great for upper body and ab tone. The only drawback is that some strokes don’t use your leg muscles that much so you may not work a major portion of your total muscle mass. While swimming is great for rehabilitating a knee or ankle, it doesn’t do much for maintaining bone density and studies show it may not be the best weight loss activity either.

• Water's natural buoyancy. It supports about 90 percent of your body weight, so there's no painful jarring of your joints. Not only does this prevent injury, it helps prevent post-workout soreness.
  
  
• Water is also 14 times thicker than air so it offers plenty of muscle toning resistance in any direction you move.
  
  
• Swimming is a good exercise when recovering from a hip, knee or ankle injury.

• You need a certain amount of skill so you don't, well, flop around like a fish out of water.
  
  
• Scientists speculate that you burn less fat and more glucose and that water keeps your body temperature and heart rate somewhat lower than do land-based workouts. For this reason, swimming is not the best choice for weight loss.
  
  
• Depending on where you live, you may have trouble finding a place to swim, especially during winter months.