Menu:
Aquatic Fitness & Exercise
If you have health problems or are recovering from an injury, aqua aerobics and aqua exercise might just be the right remedies for you. No matter what your fitness level may be, you’re sure to enjoy your time in the water while your health improves too.
Types of exercise: You can either use pool equipment such as hand and feet flippers and foam floats or do without it. And most of all, even if you aren’t a swimmer, you can do the water exercises very easily.
Exercises are usually:
Aqua aerobics: These are low-impact exercises that help in fat-burning and endurance-building. Typically, an aerobic water exercise lasts 30-45 minutes and helps you burn 300 calories. This includes warm-ups, cool-downs and stretching exercises, and activities such as squats, jogging, jumping, kicking and dance movements.
Benefits:
- Works well for all fitness levels
- Helps in weight loss and fat burning
- Helps build strength and flexibility
- Very good cardio-respiratory exercise
Aqua exercise: These resistance exercises improve your strength and mobility and offers resistance in all directions. Water provides a great cushioning effect which helps greatly if you suffer from body stress, are overweight, are recovering from soft tissue injury, or are pregnant women.
Benefits:
- It increases your aerobic endurance
- Makes you more flexible
- It increases your muscle tone
If you don’t have an instructor in your area, just walk, jog or run in the water. Begin at the shallow end of the pool, and walk or run into the deeper end until the water is waist-high or chest-high. With these exercises, you can tone your legs and hips and increase your cardio-respiratory fitness levels.
If you do water squats, you will find your lower body toned. For this, stand in hip-deep water with your feet apart and bend your knees as if you were getting into the squat position. Go as low as you can comfortably, and use the side of the pool for help. Return to the beginning position and repeat this 5-10 times.
Other benefits:
- You burn a lot of calories during and after a workout.
- Any stress you feel recedes and your energy level rises.
- You can exercise in the privacy of a pool.
- Water exercises are easier to perform as they need you to support only you’re your body weight.
- It is economical to do these exercises since they don’t demand special equipment.
- Due to the buoyant nature of water, your risk of stress-related injuries is greatly reduced.
- Since the water works against your movements, it means a higher intensity workout than land exercises.
- Water around you in the pool creates a massaging effect.
This is a year-round activity, thanks to indoor pools.
Medical problems it cures: With water exercise, you can be cured of arthritis, back pain, joint problems, MS, soft-tissue injury, cardiac patients and obesity. However, if you do suffer from any of these conditions, speak to your doctor before getting onto this program.
Copyright © 2006 fitpunch.com