It’s not often that you get to see a picture of a totally naked me swimming, on a quality site such as this one, and so you won’t. Instead, what you get is a splash of invigorating information about water, misguidedly considered our foreign element!
Here’s a quick recap on water lore. A good 70% and more of each cell in the body consists of water. We can go without solid food for weeks and survive; deprive us of life-sustaining liquid for more than a few days, and we die.
Sensible exercisers, by extension, know that remaining hydrated is an essential principle and that water, in any number of forms, is the most vital health supplement.
It is stock wisdom, also, that our planet is water-covered. In Water World gill-developing Kevin Costner is shown to spend much of this global-warming sci-fi movie competing with other desperate survivors of planetary disaster to find the last remaining dry spots on Earth. He, unlike the rest of us, has adapted comfortably to the liquid element and can thrive while immersed in it. I’d like to argue that our non-fictional discomfort with the aqueous domain can be turned to our advantage. Taking to the water as your exercise environment can prove to be a positive plunge towards developing physical fitness of a high quality.
We’re blessed in South Africa with a climate that makes outdoor swimming an enjoyable method of both aerobic and muscular conditioning. But you don’t have to be a Reyck Neethling, practising Olympic strokes of freestyle, breast and back stroke or butterfly, to be able to develop your cardio capacity and condition major muscles in the body.
A workout in water is particularly inviting during our extended summer months when it is great to be active outdoors, staying cool in water that has not yet reached tea-brewing temperatures. As long as your water activity does not consist merely of splashing about and paddling a desultory length or two, the cardiovascular advantages of this form of recreational exercise are considerable.
You must be prepared to move continually in and through the water for at least 20 minutes for it to be systemically significant and to increase your aerobic capacity. Working in water must be sustained at a moderate, regular pace for this unbroken period of time and, by varying your strokes and other movements you can utilise different muscle groups to achieve your target heart rate (THR): 65-85% of maximum heart rate.
Advantages
The advantage of exercising in water is that it is the most risk-and injury-free form of exercise. Because there is no jarring or impact, joint or bone stress is minimal, making this medium ideal for those who are overweight or have arthritis or joint problems (I assume not many of my readers are pregnant, but this is an excellent medium for such persons).Water will both support your body weight and relieve the load on ankles, knees and hips, while providing enough resistance ( up to seven times that of the free air) to necessitate energy-burning effort for propulsion. Extra calories/kilojoules will be burned as you work to achieve your target heart rate.
Even if you can’t swim, by staying in chest-high water you can walk or jog across a pool while doing upper-body swimming strokes or co-ordinating upper-limb movements which use the water as resistance. You can vary movements by bobbing, walking backwards or skipping side to side, or raising legs in different directions or at varied angles. Aquacise, or water-aerobic exercise classes, taught in outdoor pools, or indoors, in heated gym pools, are based on this notion of non-swimming motion in the resisting medium of water. To bolster the confidence of non-swimmers and provide support, while also adding extra resistance to movements, flotation devices, such as pool noodles and a range of water-wing aids are often used in the structured classes taught by instructors.
For those who are able to swim, water can be used to improve further one’s aerobic fitness by adding to the above movements a variation of the recognised strokes, and adapting the pace and level of intensity at which one swims them. For example, after the obligatory warm up, walk across the pool in chest-deep water, then swim back. Repeat, using different strokes. Gradually decrease the duration of each segment, taking care to remain in your THR zone, and work towards finally replacing the walk or jog segment with a swim stroke.
Pitfalls
As pleasurable as exercising in water can be, there are some disadvantages to be noted. These include the eye, ear and nose infections prevalent among swimmers, and, more significantly, the fact that, if you are fat, swimming on its own is not the best fat-reducing form of exercise (my overweight neighbour used to claim that she was so only because she was retaining water. Currently, she’s retaining the Midmar Dam).
Beginner swimmers struggle to lose fat in water because they are unable to train aerobically. Incapable of executing the strokes easily, they have problems in staying aerobic in their movements. They are forced to expend so much energy in fighting their way through the resisting medium that they go into oxygen debt and use the energy stored in the muscles. Thus, they work anaerobically, and soon exhaust their stored and limited glycogen energy supply, so that they become unable to keep working. Further, because the capillaries in the muscles constrict when immersed in water, which tends to be cooler than the body, the muscles, which need a plentiful supply of oxygen for aerobic work, tend to transfer more readily to an anaerobic state when you swim, as there is
less oxygen-carrying blood available.
To burn 100 calories, it is claimed that it would take approximately 15
minutes of power- walking, 63.5 minutes of vigorous sex (where do they get
these figures?) or 9.5 minutes of swimming. A one mile (1609 metres) swim,
in terms of the energy burned, is the equivalent of 4 miles (6436 metres)
of jogging, depending on variables such as the stroke and how well it is
executed.
Women, because of their naturally higher body fat percentage,
are more buoyant and so burn fewer calories than men over the same
distance and have to work a little harder to achieve this end. Regular
swimmers’ bodies seem to adapt to their liquid environment which requires
of them warmth and buoyancy. The regular loss of heat during exercise in
water that is cooler than skin temperature, may trigger responses which
ensure that subcutaneous fat is protected so that it insulates the body
and reduces heat loss. Swimmers, while achieving excellent physical
fitness and aerobic stamina, tend to lose fat from around their muscles
and relocate it beneath the skin where it keeps them warm and helps them
stay afloat. Even Olympic swimmers are said to be 4-5% fatter than
Olympic runners.
In addition, and contrary to popular belief, swimming does not use
all muscle groups of the body. The arms, shoulders and chest are most
involved, but the abdomen and legs are poorly serviced by swimming (the
flutter kick is recognised to have little propulsive significance, but
plays an important role in balancing the body in the water).As the legs
constitute the largest muscle groups in the body, their under-utilisation
in swimming requires of the lighter, upper-body muscles more work before
aerobic conditioning can be achieved. So, while swimming, when done
efficiently, will condition the cardiovascular system, it is not a
particularly good muscle developer and thus is one of the least effective
fat-reducing forms of aerobic exercise.
However, if you remember that it is the amount of muscle involved in
any exercise programme which is most important, you should be able to
exploit the best potential of water as a resistance element. By
participating in the wider range of varied movements to be found in
well-structured, non-traumatic water-aerobic classes, you should be able
to achieve a happy level of overall fitness.
So, if you haven’t done it yet, why not get into the water? And, if you do decide to take the plunge,
please, remember to return it by Friday!