Relieve back pain! Loosen tight muscles! Help with mobility in your joints! Lower your blood pressure! Increase balance! Yes, these are some of the reasons water fitness can be the fitness program for you.
So what is water fitness?
Water fitness is basically a workout program designed to be done in a pool or even the Gulf. This is different than a fitness program designed for out of the water. How so? Water fitness is based on resistance, not weight. As a matter of fact, if you are neck deep in water, your body only weighs 10% of your true weight. This results in less impact on your joints allowing for better mobility, easing pain and maintaining better balance.
Using resistance as our “weight” allows us to use both the forward and back motion in a single exercise and dramatically reduce the time needed to workout.
Let me explain. You are neck deep in the pool, you are going to perform the basic fly exercise for your chest. Typically done lying down on land, we perform it standing when in the water. When you start, you extend your arms straight out to the sides at shoulder height. Keeping your arms straight, clap your hands together quickly in front of your body. This is the chest part. When you move your arms back to your sides, keeping your arms straight, you are working your back. So you have just worked out your chest and back with one exercise. Cool, right? This is just the beginning! Many exercises can be done this way. Your abs and lower back, your hamstrings and your glutes, etc.
The beauty of a water fitness program is it covers all aspects of fitness, from people with chronic conditions to seasoned fitness athletes. You don’t need any special equipment or even know how to swim. It also has the built in safety feature of not being able to produce more resistance than your body can handle. Water aerobics can burn 400 to 700 calories per hour, which is about the same as land based aerobics, but without placing any strain on your joints!
Included are a few exercises to get yo pool and keeping legs straight, raise legs as high as possible and lower. Do this for 60 secs
- Lateral Raise – Arms along your sides, lift both arms up sideways to surface level as quickly as possible. Return to starting position. Do for 60 secs
- Water walking – In waist to chest deep water, walk back and forth across the pool, swinging your arms fully as if walking. Do for 2 minutes
- Tick tock hop – Quickly jump from side to side, keeping feet together. Do for 60 secs
