| Now, on to the less obvious training methods in a pool.
These exercises should be performed in water that is about up to your shoulders or neck. When your body is submerged it displaces the water around you. When an object displaces any fluid, the fluid tries to reject the object and places a force on the object proportional to its volume (this is why less dense things float in water). So the water will start to push on your skin in each direction. This will make it slightly harder to breathe, thus strengthening your lungs and diaphragm, our first advantage.
While you are submerged there are two basic things you can do. The first is running, the second is your technique.
When you first start off running in water you will notice that it is very hard. This is because water prevents movement much more than air does. You probably won't move that fast, but it is ok. We are not looking to break records, we are looking to build up endurance and stamina while burning calories. If you are moving as fast as you can, you might feel a slight pain alround your body. This is because the water has higher resistance, thus friction, than the air. Basically the motion against water is sanding down your skin. This will simulatneously make your skin smoother and more resistant to pain.
Finally you can also practice your techniques with your body submerged. Unlike the ankle or the wrist wieghts on land, using water for resistance is very low impact. So if you are worried about your joints, this will help save them a bit. As you train your technique underwater you will be building up muscular endurance and speed at the same time. In a previous post I talked about slow and fast twitch muscles. By trying to snap your moves underwater you will bring your fast twitch muscles to their limit. After that limit your slow twitch muscles will do the work. (If you know Tai Chi, that is excellent to do in a pool as it will strengthen your movements through the increased resistance.)
In general training in water reduces the impact on your joints, decreases your chance of heat stroke and increases resistance on your whole body. This breaks the normal rule of higher resistance means higher impact. As you can see training in a pool has many advantages, however there are also disadvantages:
- It is impossible to effectively jump underwater, meaning practicing jump kicks is out.
- Whenever you are around more than a foot of water drowning is a risk. Be safe.
- The force the water puts on you decreases your net weight (a 10 pound rock is about as hard to move in the water as you are) so this makes it very hard to step up training once you get used to it. (You can make 'weights' out of sponge-like pool floatation devices, but those are limited in usefulness.)
- If you are in a public pool, space is an issue.
- Being underwater will make it almost impossible to fall down. As a result, balance is not trained in the slightest. Practicing moves you don't know very well underwater is a good way to get into bad habits and ruin your ability to do that move effectively.
- If you are of fair skin (like myself) or you have skin cancer in the family medical history (like myself) sunburn is a big issue. Use plenty of waterproof sunscreen or go to an indoor pool (like myself).
- You can only really do this in the summer when pools are open, unless you have an indoor pool near your house.
This is pretty much everything I can tell you from my experience in martial arts and several years working at a public pool where senior citizens did a water-aerobics class. I know that we are currently in the dead of winter, but hopefully you will be able to retain some of this information until May when it gets warm enough for the pools to open again. |