Swimming Pools
Read the passages given below and answer the questions that follow them:
Swimming pools were once considered a luxury limited only to the rich. Today, thanks to plastics and plenty, they number in the millions. Few, of course, are of Olympic size where a swimmer can quickly do his laps and stay in shape. Most are above-ground, round mini-pools, the line for a cool-off and a frolic. But, health experts have come to realise that exercises created especially for such swimming pools can tone the muscles, strengthen the heart and pacify the spirit of people of all ages and conditions. And these exercises aren’t restricted to small pools alone. Any type of pool, including a crowded municipal one, will do.
The designer of the principal popular exercises is C. Carson Conrad, Executive Director of the California Bureau of Health. Physicians approve of Conrad’s exercises for three reasons.
First, since water pressure, even on a non-moving body, stimulates the heart to pump blood throughout the body, an exercise in the water promotes thorough circulation still more effectively. Second, water exercise is rhythmic. And continuous, rhythmic exercises, authorities agree, are one of the best defences against circulatory ailments which might cause atherosclerosis, often the precursor of coronary attacks and strokes.
Third, water exercise can be enjoyed with benefit by both young and old, healthy and infirm swimmers, and in shallow water, non-swimmers. Dr Ira H. Wilson and Fred W. Kasch, a physician-and-physiologist team, assert that even persons with paraplegia, rheumatic heart, asthma, emphysema, victims of polio or strokes, or amputation can exercise in water and enjoy weightless movement. Arthritics move easily under water. Some physicians use hydro callisthenics for their cardiac patients.
At the University of Illinois Prof. Richard H. Pohndori studied the effect of water exercise on a “typical” couple. He chose as subjects a man-and-wife team of physicians, 43 and 41 years old respectively, who had been sedentary for years. His program was simple: “Swim from one end of the pool to the other until you can swim 1000 yards a day. Swim every day for ten weeks”. Before they started, the couple took 151 physical tests. At the end of ten weeks, they were tested again: their pulse rate had dropped, their rate of breathing had dropped, their blood pressure had come down to normal, the cholesterol level in their blood had dropped 20 per cent. Further, more than half of the broken blood vessels disfiguring the woman’s thighs had vanished, her husband had improved in all his physical-fitness tests; he reduced the size of his heart, making it more efficient. Both felt younger, more vigorous.
Questions
I. Answer briefly:
1. Are swimming pools still considered a luxury limited only to the rich? Give a reasoned answer.
2. Who is the designer of the popular swimming exercises? What is the effect of water pressure on the body?
3. How can children and non-swimmers enjoy water exercises?
4. What was the effect of water exercises on the couple after 151 tests?
II. Vocabulary:
1.The phrase ‘thanks to’ mean?
(a) thanking (b) because of (c) with the help of (d) therefore
2. The word similar in meaning to ‘thorough’ is:
(a) proper (b) inside (c) plenty of (d) little
3. The word opposite in meaning to `predecessor’ is:
(a) successor (b) heir (c) follower (d) descendants
4. ‘Amputation can exercise in water and enjoy weightless movement.’ Here the word ‘exercise’ is a/an:
(a) noun (b) verb (c) adjective (d) adverb
Answers
I.1. No, the swimming pools are not considered a luxury limited only to the rich alone. Thanks to plastics and plenty, there are millions of them. Even the masses can enjoy swimming there.
2. C. Carson Conrad is the designer of the popular swimming exercises. Water pressure stimulates the heart to pump blood. Water exercises improve blood circulation.
3. Water exercises can be enjoyed even by the children and non-swimmers in shallow water. They convey weightless movements which are useful for people of all ages.
4. Their pulse rate dropped and so did their rate of breathing. Their blood pressure came down to normal and cholesterol dropped 20 per cent.
II.1. (b) because of
2. (b) proper
3. (c) successor
4. (b) verb
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