10 Effective Workouts You Can Do in an Exercise Pool
By aupool | Date:
2025-01-07 | 721
read
One wonderful way to keep fit and avoid putting strain on the joints is to exercise in an exercise pool. Pool exercises are an excellent fitness choice if you are recovering from an injury, seeking ways to increase your fitness levels, or simply want to mix up the daily workouts in your normal gym. Water provides resistance that works for multiple muscle groups and protects your joints.
But can you do all the normal exercises in the pool? We’ll answer this question in this article and take you through 10 pool exercises that target different areas of the body providing you with strength, endurance, and flexibility.
Why Choose Pool Exercises?
Exercising in an exercise pool has many benefits. Here’s why pool exercises are a great choice:
- Low impact on joints: It supports your body, lowering the stress on joints, and that’s perfect for someone with joint pain or recovering from an injury.
- Full-body workout: The water’s resistance tugs muscle fibers in the arms, shoulders, back, core, and legs — toning and building strength.
- Better heart health: Swimming is a good way to get in cardiovascular activity while cooling off.
- Increased resistance: These exercises are a good way to build muscle, as pool exercises add natural resistance.
- Improved flexibility: Water maintains a sense of movement and helps you move freely; it also helps with flexibility.
- Keeps you cool: During exercise, especially on hot days, the water keeps you cool.
- Works for all fitness levels: Pool exercises can be adjusted to fit anyone, from beginners to advanced.
- Helps with weight loss: Water helps keep you burn calories and tone muscles through its resistance.
- Great for recovery: They're perfect for rehabilitation because pool exercises are very gentle on the body.
- Improves mood: Endorphins (those great mood enhancers that make us feel less stressed and more relaxed) are released during water exercises.
Pool exercises keep you stronger, more flexible, and healthier. Whatever your goal is getting fit, recovering, or de-stressing, the exercise pool is the place to work out.
Essential Equipment for Pool Exercises
Though you can do a lot of pool exercises without any workout gear, adding tools can enhance your routine. Here’s a list of helpful swimming pool exercise equipment:
- Water Dumbbells: These lightweight tools cause resistance during strength training exercises.
- Resistance Bands: Resistance will add to the movements and, in turn, increase the intensity of your workout.
- Kickboards: They are very good for pacing leg workouts and swimming practice.
- Ankle Weights: You can use these to complement lower-body movement exercises such as leg lifts or flutter kicks.
- Pool Noodles: They help support some exercises and keep the balance.
These pool exercise accessories will make the exercises more challenging and fun.
10 Effective Workouts You Can Do in an Exercise Pool
Let’s talk about some great exercises you can do in your exercise pool that hit different muscles and help you reach your fitness goals.
1. Water Walking or Jogging
One of the simplest but most effective pool exercises for beginners is water walking or jogging. Walking or running in the water is the best full-body workout, including your core, heart, legs, and arms. While this gives a great cardio workout, the water’s resistance also helps tone muscles.
How to Do It:
- Put your body in water up to your waist and keep your body straight and aligned.
- Walk ahead, but bring your knees higher than normal, and swing your arms for more speed.
- Instead of walking, try jogging to intensify things.
Pro Tip: To increase the workout resistance a bit further, you can add wrist weights or use water gloves.
2. Leg Lifts
Leg lifts are just the ticket if you want stronger thighs, glutes, and core. This easy exercise helps increase balance and tone the lower body, thus good for those looking to shape their leg muscles.
How to Do It:
- Use the pool wall to stabilize you.
- Raise one leg to the side, keeping the leg fully extended slowly.
- After you complete that side, hold for a few seconds, lower your leg back down, and repeat with the other side.
Pro Tip: To add an extra bit of resistance, perform this exercise with ankle weights. Aim for 10–15 reps per leg.
3. Flutter Kicks
Flutter kicks are great to work your legs and core — especially your lower abdominal muscles. Swimming legs mimic the kicking motion of actual swimming and are perfect for strengthening muscles since they don’t force your joints to overdo it.
How to Do It:
- You may hold on to the pool edge or even a kickboard for support during this exercise.
- Straighten your legs behind you and start to oscillate sharply up and down, alternating with your legs.
- Continue for 1-2 minutes.
Pro Tip: To add some excitement, you may use fins to add some amount of additional force and enhance your leg workout.
4. Arm Curls with Water Dumbbells
For anyone seeking to build arm muscles, water dumbbells provide the extra weight needed to build some muscle into the movements. This exercise targets your biceps, triceps, and shoulders, building upper body] strength.
How to Do It:
- Stand in the chest-high water and take two water dumbbells.
- Slowly curl your arms, with your palms facing up, towards your shoulders, and then lower them.
- Do 2 –3 sets of 12-15 reps per arm.
Pro Tip: If you aren’t happy with the intensity at first, you can increase the resistance by adding more sets or using heavier water dumbbells.
5. Squats
The Squat is one of the best exercises to work on your legs, gutless, and core. The water also makes squats easier on your joints and allows a deeper range of motion.
How to Do It:
- Keep your feet shoulder-width apart and stand in chest-high water.
- Proceed to slowly ease your body down into a squat style with the back straight.
- To get up, use your heels.
Pro Tip: Add a water dumbbell or a weighted bar to manage the resistance level to get high-intensity training.
6. Pool Plank
The pool plank is a wonderful exercise that stretches the core, shoulders, and legs maximizing your pool aerobic routine. Due to the water’s buoyant force acting on your body, you develop more muscle contact with water than with the regular plank on the surface.
How to Do It:
- Wade through the water up to the waist and hold a pool noodle to help support you.
- Stretch your legs behind you and hold the noodle before you with both hands.
- Maintain your posture straight so that you have formed the plank position.
- Hold for 30 seconds to 1 minute, depending on your level of strength as a trainer.
Pro Tip: To intensify the exercise and focus on the lower half, you should add ankle weights.
7. Treading Water
Treading water is one of the most efficient exercises, and it is particularly recommended in pools, and mainly floating is recommended for endurance. It is both a strength training exercise and an aerobic exercise since it activates your stomach, your arms, MS, and your legs.
How to Do It:
- Get up to the deeper end of the pool while making sure your head is always above the water line.
- Float on your back and use your hands and legs; to swim use your legs with light kicks and use your arms as oars.
- Start with treading for 1-3 minutes. If you find that your body cannot handle it anymore, then stop.
Pro Tip: For safety, beginners are encouraged to wear a flotation belt or a pool noodle while they build up stamina.
8. Push-ups on the Pool Wall
Push-ups in water are a good way to tone the chest muscles, shoulder, and triceps muscles. When practicing push-ups against the wall of the pool, they will be much lighter on the joints than regular push-ups on the floor.
How to Do It:
- Begin the stroke by standing ideally with your back towards the water and your feet touching the water at a depth that will only cover your waist.
- Put your hands on the rim of the pool and bend forward slightly.
- Push yourself back to the initial position and continue with the exercise.
Pro Tip: Make it more intense by moving farther from the wall to make it a harder kind of push-up.
9. Water Bicycle
This exercise will replicate cycling and is good for the abdominal and leg muscles. It’s a fun way to engage your muscles while improving cardiovascular fitness.
How to Do It:
- Try to tread water while lying on your back and your face out of the water.
- With your arms, maintain balance while engaging both legs, like cycling on a bicycle.
- Continue for 1–2 minutes.
Pro Tip: Beginners can use a kickboard to support them during training lessons.
10. Jumping Jacks in Water
Another set of exercises that keep the whole body active is the famous jumping jacks. When you do them in the water, there is more resistance; it becomes a cardio exercise, and you can tone the muscles.
How to Do It:
- Being in a chest-deep pool, stand with your feet close to one another.
- Jump and move your legs wide apart while raising your arm and placing your hands above your head.
- Slightly jump back to the initial position.
Pro Tip: Include water gloves in the aerobics to raise the resistance level and produce more stress.
Additional Tips for Pool Workouts
To make the most out of your exercise pool sessions, keep these helpful tips in mind:
Warm-Up and Cool Down:
Like any other form of exercise, stretching, and warm-up are very important for pool exercises. The warm-up exercises can include light exercises such as water walking to prepare the muscles for the exercises that follow next. Lastly, extending some of the flexibility exercises in the water is recommended to minimize muscle soreness after exercise.
Stay Hydrated:
During your time in the water, it is very critical to stay well hydrated. Water intake isn’t fully solved when you are in the water; one can still become dehydrated during a swimming pool workout.
Progress Gradually:
As a beginner, make sure you begin gently and then take the pace up slowly. It does not make much sense to try and push yourself beyond the limits during an exercise session; it’s better to increase endurance gradually.
Conclusion
An exercise pool is an excellent solution for effective exercising while not putting stress on the joints. Each of the pool exercises highlighted above is tremendously helpful in developing strength and flexibility, in addition to increasing stamina. Grab the right equipment for your pool exercises to make workouts more enjoyable and productive.
