Water Aerobics
Summer is right around the corner, which means the pools are opening soon!
Aquatic workouts are a great tool for anyone to use in their health and fitness journey.
What Are The Benefits Of Water Aerobics?
- Constant Resistance: your body is being resisted from every direction, so you can easily control intensity (by changing speed of movement), and hit even the hard to get muscles!
- Low Impact: there’s minimal stress on bones and joints, so you’re less likely to sustain or aggravate an injury, making aquatic exercise ideal for rehabilitation, elderly populations, or those with osteoporosis or arthritis.
- Versatile: with small adaptations, aquatic workouts can be done by anyone!
- Improve Cardiovascular Health: your heart will become stronger, more efficient, and aquatic workouts can lower your blood pressure!
- Increase Flexibility: Less pressure on the joints means they may be able to move more than normal, so stretching in the pool can increase range of motion (joint flexibility).
Back Pain? Hit The Pool!
Working out in water takes stress off your body, spine included, and lightens your bodyweight, so you can do more movements than you could on land. This gives you an opportunity to strengthen areas that could be contributing toward your pain. Exercising in the pool is safer, with a decreased risk of injury on land, and when you’re in water, there’s no risk of falling on hard ground.
Give These Water Aerobic Exercises A Try!
Simple warm up to get the whole body warm. Keep your form just like you’re running outside. Jog in place in the water, making sure to drive your knees up high and arms moving! The more shallow the water, the more you’ll have to carry your own bodyweight load. You can start in shoulder height water; over time you can progress to chest height and then hip height. You can always add resistance too if you have access to any underwater weights!
Stand up straight in water that’s about waist deep. Hold a pool noodle with both hands. Keeping your body as straight as a board, and your arms straight, start to lean forward while pushing the noodle under the water. The more you?re leaning forward, the harder the plank will be. If you find that it’s too difficult, walk your feet forward (still keep your body straight, don?t hinge at the hips). Hold the plank for three sets of 30 seconds. If that?s too easy, you can increase the time!
Put your back against the edge of the pool, and grab hold of the edge with both hands keeping your elbows in toward each other. Push down with your hands to lift your body up out of the water, and then lower it back down again. Start out with three sets of 10-15 reps, and increase the number from there!
Stand with your feet slightly wider than hip width apart. Squat down, and immediately accelerate up into a jump. Make sure your knees don?t fall outward or inward, and you maintain a straight back! Shoot for 3 sets of 10-15, and if you can go up, add in another set or increase the rep number!
This is both an upper body and lower body workout! First get the speed bag motion down (move your fists in circles around each other), then make sure you can tread water. Once you can do both of these separately for a minute each, add them together! Try a few sets of 30 seconds first, and make time adjustments from there!