The Benefits of a Treadmill Pool

With a treadmill built right into your pool, you can enjoy low-impact walking and running with the option to vary your pace and intensity. Depending on the model, you can also control water current direction and pre-program workouts to fit your needs.

Using an underwater treadmill offers immediate rehabilitation results and helps you return to daily activities sooner than with traditional exercise on land. Learn more about the benefits of treadmill exercise:

Cardiovascular Benefits

Running in a pool, often called aqua jogging, is a great workout for your heart and lungs. But it’s also one of the best muscle-building exercises you can do. Because of the treadmill pool constant resistance of water, your muscles work hard to hold on and balance, improving strength in core, leg and upper body areas. Combine your in-pool exercise with on-land strength training and you’ll notice a significant improvement in lean body mass.

In addition, exercising in the warm, buoyant environment of a pool increases range of motion, which is especially beneficial for people with arthritis and joint pain. Water exercise also helps people recovering from a lower-body injury, such as a sprained ankle or broken bone. By allowing them to walk, jog or run in the water without having to bear any weight on their injured leg, the treadmill pool provides immediate rehabilitation results.

Many people think that swimming in a treadmill pool is the only form of water exercise available, but there are dozens of other options for people who want to improve their cardiovascular health. Water aerobics classes, which use stationary equipment like rafts or dumbbells to add resistance to a workout, are popular among seniors and athletes with joint pain. Walking, squats and lunges are also effective workouts that can be done in the pool.

Weight Loss

The low-impact nature of a treadmill pool makes it easy to add to your workout routine, regardless of your fitness level. In addition to burning calories, the natural resistance of the water helps strengthen muscles throughout your body and tone the fat content of your core, legs and arms.

Treadmill pool workouts are also an excellent option for breaking through endurance plateaus and increasing your speed. For example, one study demonstrated that using a treadmill pool increased muscle strength and flexion in the knees and hips in adults of all ages with osteoarthritis.

Another way to burn more calories is with the water taxi exercise, in which you sit on a kickboard with your feet dangling in the water and flex and extend your leg muscles while moving your arms front to back to “drive” the board around the pool in one-minute intervals. For a challenge, increase the intensity of this exercise by increasing your pace and adding more repetitions.

Lastly, swimming laps is still a great cardio workout. treadmill pool On average, a 150-pound woman burns 270 calories per hour while swimming laps at a moderate pace. To make your swim workout more challenging, try incorporating water weights to increase the difficulty of the exercises.

Reduced Stress on Joints and Bones

Those who use an underwater treadmill to run are not only exercising in a healthy environment, but also reducing the stress on their bones and joints. In water, a person’s body weight is reduced by up to 80 percent, which greatly reduces joint stress from exercises on land. A person’s muscles work hard to compensate for the resistance and turbulence of the water, strengthening the upper and lower body equally. In addition, the buoyancy of the water allows people to move with ease without the fear of falling and injuring themselves.

Running on a traditional treadmill puts significant strain on the knees, especially at higher incline levels. Using a pool treadmill with a 1% incline level helps protect the knees, placing the workload on the glute and hamstring muscles rather than the knees, says orthopaedic surgeon Kevin Plancher. The 1% incline also helps reduce the impact on the hips, but Plancher advises that those with hip issues should consult an orthopaedic specialist to develop a program that is safe for their bodies.

For those recovering from injuries, water running is a great way to improve flexibility while increasing strength and range of motion in a safe and comfortable setting. In fact, a recent study conducted by TAMU found that athletes who alternate underwater treadmill workouts with on-land strength training see greater improvements in lean muscle mass compared to those who only perform on-land exercise.

Flexibility

Treadmill pools offer many health benefits and are ideal for a number of medical conditions. In addition, their low-impact, low-stress setting is perfect for physical therapy exercises that increase flexibility, build muscle strength, improve balance and reduce pain. Many models can also be fitted with an underwater treadmill for low-impact walking or running.

A patented aquatic treadmill from HydroWorx quickly accelerates to 8.5 miles per hour, allowing people to accurately simulate land-based walking, running or sports-specific activities without the body weight and joint impact that occurs on land. This system is becoming popular with professional athletes who want to add more mileage without the extra wear and tear, as well as with people recovering from injuries.

Walking or running on the treadmill can be done with or without the swim current, enabling people of all fitness levels to get a challenging workout. This is especially beneficial for those with a variety of mobility challenges, including seniors and those recovering from injury. The natural buoyancy of the water makes it easy to move and increases range of motion.

Treadmill pools are becoming a popular attraction at elite sports medicine facilities, physical therapy clinics and senior-living communities. Request a free information kit to learn how your facility can benefit from this cutting-edge exercise technology. You may be pleasantly surprised to find out how affordable this revolutionary pool is to own and run.