Archive: August 2006

Making waves

As dog days of summer heat up, inside (or outside) water aerobics are a great move

By Al LeBlanc

The summer heat has finally arrived, and your thoughts turn to cooling off. You would really like to exercise, but you are thinking this might not be the season for vigorous exertion. Why not try water exercise?

There are many water exercise classes offered in the greater Lansing area. Check the public school districts under adult and recreation education, the larger fitness centers, the YMCA, and Lansing Community College, which also has off-campus classes.

Water exercise is much like land aerobics, but you are adding the slowing, cooling, and resistance effects of water. Your moves will be slower, and every move under water is resisted by the water. The amount of resistance depends on how fast you move and how big a body surface you are moving. For example, you can slice through the water with the edge of your hand, or you can use the broad side of your hand to resist the water, as in swimming. The water does a very good job of protecting you from injury. It is almost impossible to injure yourself in a water exercise class.

You still get the fellowship of being in a class, but having most of your body submerged gives you a nice element of privacy too. No one will really know if you are making smaller moves or slower moves. Water exercise classes allow for success by people of very different levels of fitness.

What do you need to bring to class? You will need a towel, soap, and a padlock in most centers. If the locker room is large, it helps to put colored tape on your lock so you can find it without memorizing your locker number.

You will need a bathing suit. Many classes feature jumping in the water, so it is prudent to select a suit that will stay with your body throughout a vigorous jump. Women consider the one piece suit to be safer, and men have found that the long, baggy Hawaiian style suits add a lot of weight and don’t always keep up with a jumping body.

In the mid-Michigan area, most of these classes are held indoors, and they tend to last 45 minutes or one hour. You do not need to be a swimmer to take these classes! Most classes are held in the shallow end, sometimes with an optional deep water segment.

Ask your instructor. A few classes are specially intended for deep water work, and their name will usually tell you this. Most centers have flotation belts or noodles that you can use for deep water work.

An important skill we try to teach to our students is how to figure out just how deep you ought to be. A person with arthritis, for example, can go deeper, up to the top of the shoulders, in order to reduce the impact of marching or stepping movements.

Class size tends to range from about 10 to 30 students, with area classes beginning as early as 6:00 AM and as late as 8:00 PM. Some centers require one-time payment, usually for a "semester" of 6 to 8 weeks. Others will sell you a punch card. The punch card system is nice because you can miss classes without losing the value of the card.

There are discounts for senior citizens and for those who buy a larger punch card, for example 30 classes instead of 10. Some centers allow a one time drop-in for a fee, while others have a policy that the first visit is free.

You owe it to yourself to try this versatile and interesting form of group exercise. Some local participants have been coming for years and consider this their main fitness activity.

Al LeBlanc is certified as a water exercise teacher by the Arthritis Foundation, the Aquatic Exercise Association, and Water Art Fitness International. He teaches at the Delta-Waverly Community Pool.