Swimming, water aerobics and other types of exercises that you can perform in the pool are great low-impact activities that can help you to lose weight. Combined with a healthy diet, spending two hours per day in the pool performing aquatic exercises can provide excellent weight-loss results. That's because most water exercises burn a lot of calories and at the same time have low risks for exercise-related injuries. Before you begin exercising in the pool, talk with your doctor to ensure that water exercises are safe for you to perform --- especially if you have any injuries or chronic health conditions.
Types
Aside from swimming laps, you can perform a wide variety of other fun and effective exercises in the pool. For example, you can try water flexibility, water aerobics, water walking and deep water running exercises, according to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Water yoga, water strength training and water therapy or rehabilitation are also among the many water-exercise classes often available. You might also try group water exercises, such as water volleyball, tennis, polo, tai chi, tae kwon do and dance. Water aerobics and swimming are perhaps the most common aquatic exercise choices, notes MayoClinic.com.
Weight Loss
If you want to lose weight, you can perform any type of water exercise in the pool to burn calories, says the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. To give you an idea of how many calories you can burn doing common aquatic exercises, you could burn 292 to 436 calories per hour while doing water aerobics, depending on your body weight. If you're doing water aerobics in the pool for two hours, you could burn 584 calories if you weigh about 160 lbs., 728 calories if you weigh about 200 lbs. or 872 calories if you weigh about 240 lbs., MayoClinic.com says. In two hours, swimming laps can burn an estimated 1,022 calories at 160 lbs. of body weight, 1,274 calories at 200 lbs. and 1,526 calories at 240 lbs. Exercising in the water can sometimes burn more calories than performing the same exercise on land, because water provides about 12 to 14 percent more resistance against your muscles, explains the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Factors
You'll need to consider your calorie intake through your diet in addition to the time you spend exercising in the pool. To lose weight, you must follow the basic principal of burning more calories than you consume through foods. One lb. of fat equals about 3,500 calories, so you'd need to burn at least 500 more calories per day than you consume from your diet, MayoClinic.com explains. If you spend two hours in the pool performing water exercises, you'll likely burn much more than 500 calories per day, relative to your body weight. This means that you'll lose at least 1 lb. per week if you're consuming the same diet and exercising in the pool every day for two hours. Eating healthy and avoiding excessive calorie intake is still essential to losing weight, however, and you should aim to get optimal nutrition from your diet to support your high energy use in the pool, notes the University of Michigan Health System.
Other Benefits
In addition to weight loss, daily water exercise can offer a variety of other important health benefits. For example, swimming laps actually uses and strengthens more of your body's muscles at the same time than nearly any other type of exercise, says the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Also, water exercises are less likely to cause injuries, because the water cushions your body. Swimming is low-impact, so you can perform it even if you have arthritis, back injuries and physical disabilities. Water exercise is a type of aerobic or cardiovascular activity, so it strengthens your heart and lungs while improving your cardiovascular endurance.
References
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center: Take the Plunge --- Try Swimming!
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center: Water Training --- More Than Swimming "Upstream" for Fitness
- MayoClinic.com: Exercise for Weight Loss --- Calories Burned in 1 Hour
- University of Michigan Health System: Weight Loss and Obesity
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