Water Exercise / Watercize – Exercises For The Arms

A couple of days ago, I presented you with 8 Reasons Why You Should Watercize.  Today, I’ll give you some exercises you can do in the water.  You don’t need to buy ANYTHING to do these.  Most swimming pools will already have the basic equipment to carry these exercises out.

	Description of Exercise
	Elbows bent and dumbbells submerged in front of your chest, vigorously roll in a bicycle motion. Use forward and reverse motion.
	Begin with bells just below the water surface and arms relaxed at your sides. Extend arms directly in front of your body and sweep out to the sides. Return bells back to the starting position and repeat.
	With bells close to your sides, alternate swinging straight arms in front and in back of your body. Keep arms close to your sides.  Just like walking, but you are only moving your arms.
	With elbows bent and arms held tightly at your sides, alternate pulling equipment down into the water.  Your classic curls.
	With elbows bent and bells in at your sides, alternate pushing down into the water.
	With body slightly leaning forward, punch arms downward and away from chest. Alternate arms back and forth.
	With bells near to the water’s surface and arms held to your sides, flex and extend at your elbows as you pull bells in towards arm pits.
	With bells just below the water surface and arms held out to the sides, sweep arms forward and pull bells straight back toward chest. Extend arms out to your sides and repeat.
	With bells submerged at your sides, bring both bells together touching the front of your body. Bring bells around your body, touching in back.  Sort of like the dance PeeWee Herman did in Pee Wees Big Adventure!

Other things you can do in the water, is just walk back and forth but use your whole body.  I see a lot of people doing this at the pool.  The resistance the water provides is great since it makes you work but because you’re in a bouyant environment there is little stress to your joints.

…and finally, here is a video of water exercises in action:

Here is to your health,

Mohamed

Technorati Tags: arm exercises in the water, Exercise, water exercise, watercize

8 Reasons Why You Should Watercize

Lets get the disclaimers out of the way.  Before YOU start any exercise program, speak to your health practitioner (i.e., doctor) about the program in which you wish to undertake.

Now that that is out of the way…

So I take my son (who is now 5 years old) swimming every Saturday.  He goes for lessons, but we go at least 2x per week outside of the lessons so he can practice, have fun and become one with the water (he is still a little scared of sinking).  I go with him as well, since parent/guardian needs to be with any child under the age of 7.

One thing that I notice is the B-I-G men/women, only because I’m big and it’s good to see that they are working on improving their health.  But one piece of advice – DON’T WEAR THOSE DAMN TIGHT SWIMMING OUTFITS!!!  Sorry to shout, but nobody wants to see every roll or bulge.  It’s just disgusting.  Yes, I know full well that we need to be happy with the body we have, but come on — some decorum, please? 

Regardless of your size, you should always wear clothing that complements your body shape.  Do you really want to see someone in skin tight clothing that weighs 350lbs?  It obviously looks better to see someone that’s at their ideal weight (or close to it) wearing some form fitting clothing, so long as it complements them.

Anyway back to swimming.  While splashing around in the pool is fun, and sitting in the hot tub is heaven, you should also think about watercize.

Watercize is basically exercise, but in the water.  For us big folks, this is a great alternative to heading to the gym.  I hated going to the gym, and haven’t gone for years.  You really stick out, since generally you’re the biggest of the bunch.  And head into the changerooms!!  I won’t even go into THAT discussion… I’m sure you can see the picture.

I’ve gone to a few watercize classes, and have really, really enjoyed them.  Most of the attendees were big folks trying to get into shape and loose weight.  There were a few skinny folks there, but they were there to support their significant others — cool!

Most major cities will have public pools that offer water exercise programs, you should look into what your local facility offers and attend a few classes to see if it is for you.  If you intend to follow your own exercise regiment, you can purchase your own equipment as well — though I would not recommend you go that route even if there are no programs in your area.  Basically what you do on land, in terms of aerobic type exercise can be done in the water – obviously sit-ups are out of the question.

Water exercises can be done in shallow, or deep pools.  When I attended, the instructor suggested to go into water that is at least chest deep so a few inches below the neck.  As I don’t swim, it was a bit scary for me and I had to pay special attention to balance — which is difficult in water.  But as I said, you can do many of the exercises in shallow pools as well.

As with any type of exercise you need to warm up.  This helps flex and extend your joints so that you don’t hurt yourself.  As you are warming up, you are also getting yourself ready to exercise as such through the process of the warm up you are:

• Increasing heart rate
• Increasing respiration (breathing)
• Mentally preparing you for a water workout
• Increasing blood flow to muscles
• Promoting body awareness

The primary session should last between 20 and 40 minutes.  The sessons I went to were 30 minute long, including the warm up.  The nice thing with these sessions is that once you pay to get in, you’re not kicked out at the end.  You can continue with your exercises (provided the pools are not booked for other programs).

The watercize program that I was in followed other exercise programs:

1. Endurance training Perform movements at a consistent pace. Incorporate long body movements, and keep breathing comfortably during your water workout.
   Objective: Increase cardiovascular endurance, improve body composition and burn fat.
2. Interval training Alternate between moderate speeds and faster sprints. Use smaller movements at a faster pace with rest intervals ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes in duration.
   Objective: Increase anaerobic capacity, muscular endurance, alleviate boredom and burn fat.

My instructor mixed things up to keep us actively involved.

Finally at the end you want to go through a cool down period.  For our group this was 3 to 5 minutes of easy fluid movements in the water.  Decrease speed and perform movements which emphasize those muscle groups worked out during the session.  The objective is to return heart rate to normal range, prepare the body to leave the water, complete the session, increase flexibility.

Most programs offered, will also provide some equipment for you to use and that’s why I do not suggest you buy the equipment right away.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over some leg and arm exercises you can use in the water.

I am also looking at purchasing several copies of an excellent water workout DVD and offering it either for sale here (at a HUGELY discounted price) or for a contest.

Why Water Exercise?

So now we’ve discussed what it is, and what you should be doing lets quickly go into WHY.  Well, we all know why – to get into shape, loose weight and to increase our level of health and well being.  But specifically why water exercise?

1. Effective and Safe for all Populations.
2. Less than Low Impact.
3. Buoyancy and Hydrostatic Pressure presents support and reduces the force of gravity.
4. Shallow Water Calesthenics or Deep Water Movements offer Strengthening and Cardio-Respiratory Fitness.
5. Flexibility Classes are supreme for people with arthritis or like disabilities.
6. Deep Water Aerobics Calories burned – 400-500 per hour or 9.8 calories a minute; that’s about the equivalent of calories burned during a 10-minute fitness walk. If you walk 3 miles an hour, you burn up to 300 calories an hour.
7. Advantages: No-impact workout. 12 times the resistance of air, evenly in all directions. Promotes muscle balance because you use more than one muscle group at a time.
8. Socialization – make new friends.

Additional Research on Water Exercise

Here is some research on water exercises – these are only from “trusted” sources, such as government websites or other authority sites.  I avoid providing information from commercial sites, unless I can find the information as back-up from another authority site.

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17719306 - Land versus water exercise in patients with coronary artery disease: effects on body composition, blood lipids, and physical fitness.
• http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/aqua.html - Water exercise is rapidly growing in popularity. Exercise enthusiasts, athletes, elderly, and the physically challenged are discovering aquatic exercise programs that suit their fitness desires. An advantage of aquatic exercise is that it can involve the upper and lower extremities through optimal ranges of motion while minimizing joint stress.
• http://www.dukehealth.org/HealthLibrary/News/363?search_highlight=swimming

Some of the information is obviously aimed at medical professionals, as there are a lot of charts, numbers and equations — but you should be able to get the gist of the articles.

If you are looking for DVD and other information, here is a GREAT website that sells some products that may be beneficial to you – WaterWellnessWorkouts.com.

Enjoy!

Mohamed

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Technorati Tags: diet, water exercise, watercize, Weight Loss