Focusing the majority of your energy on making improvements in the weight room will result in better strength gains. Its energy expenditure comes from the fat stores it burns. Your question has undertones of "What is a better way to give myself a muscular physique" which is decidedly different than building muscle as you stated. However, according to Sportsdoctor.com, muscle has a faster metabolism than fat, nearly 10 to 20 times faster. Swimming is an excellent, low-impact exercise for burning calories and getting fit. There are a host of benefits you may gain from swimming laps regularly. Cardiovascular exercises like running and swimming pack in a host of health benefits, from weight loss to decreasing your risk of cardiovascular disease, and boosting your mood, your immune system and your ability to handle stress. This means muscle uses more energy than fat does. Read on to learn about the benefits of swimming and how to incorporate swimming … After all the glycogen is depleted in the gym, swimming will result in a much higher percentage of fat burn. Longer strokes with greater power result in faster swimming times. The scale doesn't explain this physiologic fact. Muscle weighs more than fat, so it follows that you will gain weight on the scale. The question: I've heard that swimming can make you gain weight. Is that true?

However, weight gain affects your buoyancy, your stamina and your profile as you move through the water, so it can affect your swim speed in unpredictable ways. So, as muscle increases, fat decreases. In the water, swimmers rely on streamlined suits and proper form to shave another few hundredths of a second from their times.

"Water makes up approximately 65 to 90 percent of a person's weight, and variation in water content of the human body can move the scale by ten pounds or more from day to day," says Jeffrey A. Dolgan, a clinical exercise physiologist at Canyon Ranch in Miami Beach, Florida.