Working out in the swimming pool can build cardiovascular fitness plus muscular strength and endurance. The water's support allows greater pain-free range of motion, and can also help you feel cooler and more comfortable even during intense exercise. But if you take regular weight-training equipment into the pool you'll spend all day diving to bring it back up. Specially designed aquatic strength-training tools are either buoyant or neutrally buoyant instead.
Materials
Purpose-made water weights are typically made from one of two materials: molded plastic that you can fill with water for neutral buoyancy or fill with air for positive buoyancy; or closed-cell foam, which traps air inside the foam and thus remains buoyant even when immersed. The larger the weight, the more air it traps -- no matter what the weight is made of -- and so the more buoyant it can become.
Types of Equipment
If a kind of strength-training equipment exists for dry land, rest assured that some aquatic analog exists. Aquatic dumbbells are the most common kind of purpose-made water weights, but you can also find aquatic barbells and strap-on ankle or wrist cuffs. Other water weight options include elastic-resistance tubing, fan paddles and the occasional negatively buoyant weights made to strap to your waist, wrists or ankles for extra stability or difficulty in the pool.
Other Types of Resistance
The greater the surface area you try to move through the water, the more resistance it offers. Anything you can use to provide greater surface area as you move your body parts through the water becomes an impromptu weight. Use hand webs -- webbed gloves -- as very light weights for curling and pressing exercises. Or hold a kickboard on edge, parallel with the line of your shoulders, and rotate it through the water until one end is in your armpit, with the length of the board pointing straight in front of you. Finally, some aquatic dumbbells have blades that offer more resistance as you move them through the water instead of relying on buoyancy alone.
Improvised Weights
Anything that floats can become a weight in the pool. You can tie pool noodles, long cylinders of closed-cell foam, around your wrists or ankles as wrist or ankle weights. Or use a beach ball much as you'd use a stability ball on dry land, pressing down on the ball and balancing above it. Some water weights have blades or fins for directional stability, and using one weight in each hand makes it even easier to control your body position. But when you try to balance off a single point without any stabilizing fins -- the beach ball -- you face a much greater challenge.
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