Pool Equipment: Webbed Gloves

If I could use only one piece of equipment for my water workout, it would be webbed gloves. Webbed gloves increase the surface area of your hands, creating more resistance and increasing the intensity for your upper body. Since you are not holding the equipment in your hands, as with other pieces of resistance equipment, your fingers do not get cramped, and your elbows and shoulders are able to move more naturally. You can adjust the amount of resistance by changing the position of your hands – slicing through the water for the least resistance, making a fist for moderate resistance, and making the palms face the direction of motion with the hands open for the greatest resistance. Sculling with the palms flat helps you balance in shallow water, and helps you stabilize in deep water. The added surface area of your hands enables you to travel faster, especially in deep water. Sculling with webbed gloves or accelerating the hands toward the bottom of the pool in deep water provides lift when you want to increase the intensity of your cardio by elevating the shoulders out of the water. Click on the links below the photos to see video demonstrations using webbed gloves.

Webbed gloves provide drag resistance in all directions. You can lift the water up, push it down, sweep it to the side, or move it in a diagonal pattern. You can use webbed gloves to strength train any muscle of the upper body. If you want to focus on one muscle group, you can spread your fingers and contract that muscle against resistance, and then return to your starting point with a slicing motion. For example, if you wish to target the middle deltoids, spread your fingers and lift your arms to the sides (abduction), then slice back down. You can target both muscles of an opposing pair by keeping the fingers spread. In the previous example, you work the middle deltoids with your lift to the side, and then pause and press back down with fingers spread to work the latissimus dorsi. For more information on the benefits of using webbed gloves, see Laurie Denomme’s blog post Water Weights for Water Exercise: The Secret Tool.

There are two main types of webbed gloves for water fitness: fabric gloves and neoprene gloves.

Fabric Gloves. I prefer fabric gloves because they allow more freedom of movement in my hands and they are more comfortable. I get my webbed gloves from Hydro-Fit. They make Wave Web Pros and Wave Mitts with holes for the fingers to extend through. Their website has information on how to choose the right size, sample exercises using webbed gloves, and a video showing how to remove the gloves to extend their life. Laurie Denomme likes H20 Wear‘s Chloroguard Gloves. Other companies that make fabric webbed gloves are AquaJogger and Water Gear.

Neoprene Gloves. Neoprene is a family of synthetic rubber; it maintains flexibility over a wide range of temperatures. Neoprene is much thicker than the chlorine resistant fabric, and so it is not as easy to bend the fingers or make a fist. You can get neoprene gloves with closed fingers but most of the ones I have seen have openings for the fingers. Some companies that sell neoprene gloves are Speedo, Theraquatics, and Sprint. Put “webbed aqua gloves” in the search bar at Amazon and you will get pages of webbed gloves all colors and prices. Most of them are neoprene. A few are nylon, which will not last long. And there are some made out of silicone which would be way too stiff for a water fitness class.

Which do you prefer: fabric or neoprene? Let me know in the comment box below. Also let me know if you have a favorite brand. You will enhance your workout with webbed gloves no matter what type you prefer. My book Water Fitness Progressions has lesson plans designed specifically for use with webbed gloves, but you can use them for most of the lesson plans in the book, and for any water workout.

See you in the pool!

Author/Instructor Photo
Chris Alexander

Strength Training Equipment for the Pool

When people think of water fitness, they most often think of a cardio workout. While that is emphatically true, it is also possible to strength train in the pool. You don’t even need equipment. You can use the water’s resistance and the same principles for increasing intensity that you use for aerobic exercise. Once you have mastered that, adding equipment increases the resistance. Since most of the popular equipment made for use in the pool is hand-held, the targeted muscles are in the upper body:

  • Chest (Pectoralis major) – Chest fly/clap hands
  • Upper back (Trapezius) – Row
  • Side back (Latissimus dorsi) – Lat pull-down
  • Shoulders (Front and rear deltoids) – Arm swing
  • Shoulders and mid back (Rear deltoids and rhomboids) – Rear delt fly
  • Shoulders (Middle deltoids) – Arm lift to the sides
  • Rotator cuff – Shoulder medial rotation/rotator cuff sweep
  • Biceps – Arm curl
  • Triceps – Elbow extension

Increase the Range of Motion. Start by selecting your targeted muscle group, and moving your arms through their full, pain-free, range of motion. Notice how the water moves as your arms move.

Add Speed. Next increase your speed while continuing to move through your full range of motion. Your movement becomes harder. It’s easy to start slowing down, so pay attention to what you are doing.

Add Acceleration. Finally push harder against the water’s resistance. The harder you push against the water, the harder the water pushes back. You may notice that even though you are pushing harder, your movements are slowing down. When you get used to using acceleration, it is time to add equipment.

Buoyant Equipment. Nearly every pool facility has foam dumbbells in their equipment closet. Foam dumbbells were the first type of equipment specifically created for use in the pool. Buoyant equipment floats, therefore, the resistance comes from pushing the dumbbells down toward the pool floor. They are great for targeting the latissimus dorsi (as in the photo above) and the triceps. From a lunge position, if you lean forward 45 degrees with your spine in alignment, you can target the pectorals by pushing a chest fly toward the pool floor. Movements parallel to the floor, such as a row, an arm swing, a rear delt fly, and a rotator cuff sweep, create drag resistance, but the shoulder stabilizers must contract to hold the equipment under water. It is best to limit the number of reps for these exercises or avoid them if you cannot maintain good shoulder alignment. Movements toward the surface of the water, such as an arm lift to the sides or an arm curl, are assisted by buoyancy.

Drag Equipment. A variety of drag equipment is available. These increase the resistance of the water by increasing the surface area. Paddles have holes that allow water to flow through. Drag bells have multiple surface areas that create turbulence.

Drag equipment is not buoyant, and the resistance is in all directions – toward the pool floor, parallel to the pool floor, toward the surface of the water, and at any other angle. Drag equipment can be used to target any of the upper body muscle groups. Examples include a chest fly with paddles, a row with a kickboard, an arm swing with drag bells, a rotator cuff sweep with webbed gloves, and an arm curl with an Aqua Ohm, as in the photos above.

Rubberized Equipment. Resistance tubing and bands that are chlorine resistant have come on the market in the past several years. They work the same as rubberized equipment on land. There has to be an anchor point and the resistance is in pulling away from the anchor point. You can use a pool ladder as an anchor point, but that is impractical in a group exercise setting. The anchor point is usually one of your hands, or you can place the band behind your back, or from a seated position put it under your thighs, and then pull with both arms. Resistance tubing is too long to be able to hold a handle in each hand for most people. Try using one handle as the anchor point, then putting the other hand on the appropriate length of tubing. You can slip your wrist through the loose handle to keep it from flopping around in the water, as in the photo to the left of a rear delt fly.

Once you are comfortable with the equipment you can continue to increase the intensity by increasing the range of motion, adding speed, or adding acceleration, that is, by pushing or pulling harder. You can move up to a larger size foam dumbbell or drag bell, or a thicker resistance tube. You can hold a shorter length of rubberized equipment. You can close the holes on the paddles. You can use different pieces of equipment at different times to prevent your muscles from getting used to one type. Click on the name of each piece of equipment for a link to 10-second video of an exercise using that equipment. For strength training lesson plans both without and with equipment, see Water Fitness Progressions.

Let the pool be your all-purpose gym for both aerobic exercise and strength training. See you there!

Author/Instructor Photo
Chris Alexander

Is Aquatic Exercise a Fitness Trend?

Choosing An Aquafit Class for You | Fix.com

Every year the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) does an international survey to determine the health and fitness trends for the coming year. Respondents to the survey come from a variety of health and fitness professions, including personal trainers, medical professionals, exercise physiologists, professors, health and wellness coaches and a few group exercise instructors. Here are the top twenty fitness trends:

  1. Wearable technology (fitness trackers, smart watches, heart rate monitors, etc.) This has been in the top 3 since 2016.
  2. Home exercise gyms. These became popular because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  3. Outdoor activities. Also popular because of COVID-19.
  4. Strength training with free weights.
  5. Exercise for weight loss. This increased in popularity because of perceived (or real) weight gain during quarantine.
  6. Personal training.
  7. High intensity interval training.
  8. Body weight training. This includes things like push-ups, burpees, and planks.
  9. On-line live and on-demand exercise classes. This was the number one trend last year, but dropped to number 9 as gyms re-opened.
  10. Health and wellness coaching.
  11. Fitness programs for older adults.
  12. Exercise is medicine. Doctors referring patients to fitness professionals appeared as a trend 2017.
  13. Employing certified fitness professionals.
  14. Functional fitness. This involves strength training to improve the activities of daily living.
  15. Yoga. This includes a wide variety of Yoga styles.
  16. Mobile exercise apps.
  17. Online personal training. This refers to one-on-one sessions, as opposed to online group exercise classes.
  18. Licensure for fitness professionals. This is a trend to pursue regulation of fitness professionals.
  19. Lifestyle medicine. This is the practice of helping individuals and families adopt healthy behaviors for life.
  20. Group exercise training. This dropped dramatically in popularity because of COVID-19.

Aquatic exercise is not included among the trends! That is probably because the American College of Sports Medicine is not involved in aquatics. But as anyone who has recently checked out a pool schedule knows, aquatic exercise classes are on the menu. Water fitness participants were among the first to return to their workouts after lockdowns were lifted, possibly because chlorinated water is known to kill the Coronavirus, as confirmed by a 2021 study in the U.K.

So, what are the fitness trends in aquatics? I decided to do an informal survey by checking out the classes at the International Aquatic Fitness Conference (IAFC) being held May 1-6 at Daytona Beach, Florida and Florida Mania Fitness Pro Convention being held May 20-22 at Orlando, Florida. IAFC has presenters and participants from around the world. Florida Mania is one of seven conventions for personal trainers and group exercise instructors in various cities in the United States. If I understood the class descriptions correctly, the most frequent sessions on the schedule for these two events were:

  1. Strength training – 11 sessions at IAFC and 2 at Mania
  2. Interval training – 8 sessions at IAFC and one at Mania
  3. Cardio – 5 sessions at IAFC and 4 at Mania
  4. Functional fitness – 7 sessions at IAFC and 2 at Mania
  5. Mind-body exercise (Yoga and Pilates) – 8 sessions at IAFC

There were also 2-3 sessions each on Zumba, Barre, Combat, Circuits and a combination of swimming and water exercise. Other topics covered include water walking, choreography, multi-depth classes, ballet, Ai Chi, pelvic floor, core, post natal, cognition and stretching. There are always sessions on various kinds of aquatic equipment to give participants an opportunity to try them out. Some of these are adapted from land fitness classes:

  1. Hydrorider (aquatic bicycle) is the most popular with 7 sessions at IAFC.
  2. Aqua Pole – 3 sessions at IAFC and 2 at Mania
  3. Noodles remain popular with 4 sessions at IAFC
  4. Trampoline – 3 sessions at IAFC
  5. Aqua Drum Vibes – 3 sessions at IAFC
  6. Aqua Board – one session at IAFC (participants exercise on a board that floats on top of the water)
  7. Bands – one session at IAFC
  8. Aqua Ohm – one session at IAFC
  9. Liquid Star – one session at Mania

This gives you an idea of the wide variety of options for an aquatic fitness class. Maybe some day aquatic fitness will be included in ACSM’s list of top twenty fitness trends.

See you in the pool!

Author/Instructor Photo
Chris Alexander

What Should a Water Fitness Instructor Know?

If you ask most people what a water fitness instructor should know, they would probably say pool exercises. While that is true, there is so much more to teaching a water fitness class than just knowing a variety of exercises. I teach a class for beginning water fitness instructors. While the class does not give participants a national certification, it does provide them with the basics to get them started and will help them prepare for getting certified later on. My next Beginning Water Fitness Instructor class will be October 9 and 16, 2021 from 10:00 AM – 2:30 PM at the McKinney Senior Pool in McKinney, Texas. Participants need to attend both Saturdays. Here is a sample of what I want them to learn:

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It’s important to know the names of the muscles and what they do. What muscles are you using when you clap hands, push forward, do a side bend, kick backward, or do jumping jacks? You need to be aware of what muscles you are using when you plan your classes so that you don’t end up working the pectoralis major, triceps and quadriceps while leaving out the trapezius, gluteus maximus and hamstrings for an unbalanced workout. You need to know movement terms like flexion, extension, abduction and adduction, because different instructors use different names for the same exercises, but if you know the scientific name for the exercise you will know exactly what the exercise is.

Water fitness classes take place in water which is much different from classes on land. The properties of water offer many benefits. Buoyancy offloads the joints. Resistance promotes muscle balance. Hydrostatic pressure increases the stroke volume and cardiac output of the heart. If you understand Newton’s Laws of Motion, you can use them to your advantage. Make use of Newton’s First Law: Inertia by changing the direction of travel. Make use of Newton’s Law of Acceleration by using more force when pushing against the water. Make use of Newton’s Third Law: Action and Reaction by using impeding arms or legs. You need to know how to increase intensity to make the exercises harder. For example, you can increase the range of motion, increase the speed, add power or travel. You also need to know how to decrease intensity. You can slow the moves down, substitute a different move with shorter levers, or slice with the hands instead of cupping them.

Water fitness equipment is very popular, and it is important to know how to use the equipment that is available to you. Buoyant equipment, such as noodles and foam dumbbells float. That means they offer resistance only when pushing them down toward the pool floor. Drag equipment, such as paddles, provide resistance in any direction.

Then of course you do have to know a variety of exercises. It might surprise you to know that there are only seven basic shallow water exercises: walk, jog, kick, rocking horse, cross-country ski, and jumping jacks. All the other exercises are variations of these six. For example, you can take the basic exercise and change the arm movements; change the foot positions; work the move forward, sideways or backward; cross the midline; change the working position; or change the tempo. You can organize the exercises in many ways. Organizing the exercises into a lesson plan is writing choreography. There are a number of choreography styles that can help you do this. There is linear choreography, pyramid choreography, add-on choreography, the layer technique, and block choreography. Of course you want to put your choreography to music. Copyright laws prevent you from making playlists from your favorite musicians. Instead, buy your music from businesses that produce music specifically for fitness classes. For more information on teaching water fitness classes, see my books Water Fitness Progressions and Water Fitness Lesson Plans and Choreography..

If you would like to take the course you can register at https://webtrac.mckinneytexas.org/wbwsc/webtrac.wsc/wb1000.html?wbp=1 You will have to create an account with the McKinney Parks and Recreation Department. For assistance in creating an account, call the McKinney Senior Pool at 972-547-7947. Search for the class by using the Activity Number 303191. From there, add the class to your cart (the small cart icon on the left) and complete payment. In-person registration is available at the Senior Pool at 1400 College St. in McKinney. For more information on the class, see page 14 of the Fall Activity Guide https://www.mckinneytexas.org/DocumentCenter/View/27936/Activity-Guide-PR-Fall-2021

See you in the pool!

Author/Instructor Photo
Chris Alexander

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Keep Your Muscle Mass

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Your muscles grow until around age 30 and after that they begin to decline. If nothing is done to prevent this loss of muscle mass, the end result is loss of grip strength, difficulty picking up heavier objects, trouble rising out of a chair, and an inability to get up off the floor. Who wants that?? The good news is that loss of muscle mass in not an inevitable part of aging. Like the saying goes, use it or lose it! Using it means strength training.

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that every adult perform activities that maintain or increase muscular strength and endurance for a minimum of two days a week. Adults over 65 should strength train two to three times a week. In other words, the older you get the more important strength training becomes.

You can strength train at home using bands. You can perform exercises that use your own body weight such as push ups, planks and wall sits. You can go to a gym and use free weights or weight machines. Most gyms have someone on staff who can show you how to use the weight machines. Or you can hire a personal trainer who can design a personalized strength training program. Ideally you will mix things up and do a variety of strength training routines. Lift the weight quickly but take 3-5 seconds to lower it. Choose 8 to 10 exercises targeting the major upper body, mid body and lower body muscle groups. Healthy adults should do 8-12 repetitions of each exercise with a weight heavy enough to be challenging but not so heavy that you have to strain to lift it. Older adults should do 10-15 repetitions using lighter weights.

You can also do your strength training in the pool. This requires some effort on your part. It is possible to do the exercises in your water fitness class by gently moving through the water, slicing your hand to minimize the resistance, possibly chatting with other exercisers at the same time. There may be benefits to this, but improving strength is not one of them. Instead of slicing, move your fist through the water, or even better, present an open hand with the fingers slightly cupped. Push hard against the water, with as much speed and power as you can. The harder you push, the harder the water pushes back. You want to create turbulence, making white water and waves. This kind of effort requires concentration but it is necessary to overload the muscles so that you can see gains in strength.

Equipment can be added to increase the resistance in water. Choose equipment that you can handle while maintaining good alignment. Then push and pull the equipment through the water with speed and power. Drag equipment, which does not float, can be pushed and pulled in any direction. Buoyant equipment, which floats, needs to be pushed toward the pool floor in order to be effective. The turbulence and waves you create with the equipment lets you know that you are overloading your muscles and improving your muscular strength and endurance.

There are other benefits to strength training. Improving your muscular strength and endurance can help prevent osteoporosis, decrease the risk of heart disease, reduce the risk of falling, and enhance the quality of life. It can postpone the day when you become frail to some time in the distant future. And that’s a very good thing! For more information and lesson plans that have strength training as their objective, see my book Water Fitness Progressions.

See you in the pool!

Chris Alexander