Excessive swimming stunts normal growth

Answer 1

The last answer stated that yes swimming would stunt your growth but however that is totally wrong. If you swim to much you might hurt yourself but you wont stunt your growth. Look at Michael phelps he swims 6 hours a day and you expect me to believe it stunted his growth. The avg height for the previous 8 finalists for the U.S olympic swim was 6 FT 5 IN (wikipedia). Swimming makes your spine longer. Now excessive Weightlifting is detrimental to height for the fact that you can fracture your growth plate. back to swimming, swimming is a low impact sport so you will not stunt growth but you might drown.

Answer 2

This has been suspected but it has never been scientifically proven. Some say in adolescents it will delay the arrival of puberty, but there is no concrete evidence to uphold this statement.