Jump Starting Your Water Workout

This has been one hot summer, and you might be ready to move your outdoor exercises into the water.

I'm not talking about swimming, though that's a great workout. (The May-June 2010 issue of Swimmer magazine details a 2008 University of South Carolina study that found swimmers had lower mortality rates than people who were sedentary, walkers or runners.)

I'm talking about muscle-building, heart-thumping cardio activity--working out vertically, not horizontally, in the water.

Water exercise has great benefits. You can do it alone or in a group. It's adaptable to all ages, conditions and injuries. It's a proven way to increase your metabolism, relieve tension, build muscle tone and improve balance, coordination and range of motion.

A water workout allows you to exercise every muscle and joint in the body at the same time. Best of all, this is an easy way to start a fitness program if you are overweight or haven't exercised in a while.

"Water gives you so many options," says Mary Sanders, an associate professor at the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno. "You get resistance and cardio in one-stop shopping. There aren't a lot of complex exercises to do."

Sanders, 56, is a pioneer in the creation of water exercises and in studying its benefits. She earned an undergraduate degree in exercise science at the University of Wyoming where she was on the swim team. While in college, she also was a part of a dance company in Cheyenne.

"I kept noticing how many people in the dance company were getting injured," Sanders says. "So I took the group into the water to do exercises, and the end result was they recovered quicker and had fewer injuries. As time went on, I started wondering if water exercising could be applied to other things, like people who can't exercise on land because of balance issues or just the fear of exercising."

In the '80s, Sanders approached Northstar, a ski resort in Lake Tahoe, Calif., about starting a water exercise class.

"It started with only a few people," she says. "I remember the lifeguards laughing at me, but people started coming and then I was making $100 a class. The lifeguards stopped laughing."

Sanders says research shows that it takes more energy to propel a body through water than air. What's more, a water workout results in a caloric burn rate of at least 1½ times the calories expended by walking or jogging on land. Sanders, a fellow with the American College of Sports Medicine, has been conducting water exercise research and developing curriculum for more than 20 years.

For the past five years, Sanders has been studying and working with 100 Japanese women who range from the mid-70s to 90 years of age. She has the women doing at least one water exercise class per week. The results show that the women are maintaining or improving their functioning abilities.

"Water is offering some sort of stimulus--psychological or physical--to make their bodies change for the better," Sanders says.

A recent University of Pittsburgh study included two groups of women exercising five days a week. The first group exercised on land five days a week, while the other did three days of land-based exercise and two days of water exercise. The women who added water to their exercise regime typically lost 12 pounds more per person than those in the land group, the study found.

"Water is like taking land upside down," Sanders says. "In water, you have to push yourself down because everybody floats. If you run in water, you engage muscles differently. The impact is different. You have to push liquid out of the way so you use different stabilizer muscles in the water than on land. Water pushes and pulls on your muscles."

So if you're ready to jump in the water, Sanders offers these easy, but challenging, exercises that take less than 10 minutes.

1. Jog. "Running forward and back is good for muscle endurance and cardio," Sanders says. So start with some interval training. Go hard (fast) running forward and backward for 30 seconds, then go easy (slow) for 30 seconds. Then go hard sideways for 30 seconds and easy for 30 seconds. If 30 seconds is too much, try the intervals for 15 seconds. Continue the interval session for three minutes.

2. Tread. Next, try treading water. It doesn't matter if you are in shallow or deep water; just make sure your feet are off the ground. Try treading water for three minutes to start. This is high intensity. If you need to take a break, just use your hands. "Pretend like you're smoothing sand on the beach" Sanders says. Lie on your back to recover or keep a kickboard nearby if possible.

3. Double Your Fun. Finally, for upper body work, try running in shallow water while you simulate doing the butterfly stroke with your arms. Go all the way to the other side of the pool. Then for the lower body, turn with your back facing the side of the pool where you started and perform squat jumps going backward. Beginners should do this exercise for three minutes.

"Water is so sweet and simple," Sanders says. "Just add some simple good moves and let the water do the work against the body and enjoy!"