Advantages of water-based exercise
Just like land-based exercise, water aerobics and swimming can be effective strategies for improving cardio fitness, building strength, boosting your mood, easing joint pain, sleeping better, and reducing your risk for diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.
In addition, water-based exercise offers some advantages you can't get on land:
Gentler on your joints
Your body becomes buoyant in water.
When in the water, your joints experience less impact, making the pool a welcoming environment for anyone with arthritis or joint injuries. Squats that may aggravate arthritic knees on land are often doable in water.
The resistance of the water also slows down movements that can be quick and jerky on land, creating more smoothly flowing motions that are less likely to aggravate injuries.
Combo workout: Cardio plus strength
Because it is denser than air, water provides 12% to 14% more resistance. Even when you're doing cardio exercises like jogging in water, you're working against more resistance than if you were on land.
Because of the resistance factor, water exercise is a double-duty workout — cardio and strength training. This may be why many studies have found increases in lean body mass in people participating in an aqua exercise program.
Burns more calories
The resistance you encounter in water also means that you burn more calories than you would on land and helps to work more muscles.
When you do strength training on land, you're working against gravity. So, if you're doing a biceps curl — the classic strength exercise — you're contracting your biceps as you bend your arm to lift a dumbbell, and you're continuing to work the muscle as you lower the weight again in a controlled manner, without simply dropping it.
During this bicep curl, the opposing muscle in the back of your arm, the triceps muscle, goes along for the ride, lengthening and then shortening. But it's not working against resistance. The work is all being done by the bicep. In the water, however, resistance comes into play, providing more of a challenge to the opposing muscle.
Learn more about getting into aquatic exercise and check out Aqua Fitness, a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School.
Image: wundervisuals/Getty Images
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