Aqua aerobics provide a low-impact way to strengthen your back and core muscles. Strengthening these muscles is particularly important if you suffer from chronic lower back pain or other spinal conditions. Though water aerobics are safe for most people, check with your doctor before starting a program if you have a chronic medical condition or if you have recently suffered an injury or undergone surgery on your spine.
Back and Core Exercises
Many aqua aerobics programs incorporate specific exercises targeted at toning the back and abdominal muscles. Straight and bent leg lifts while standing in waist-high water and gripping the edge of the pool help strengthen your lower back and core muscles. Pulling you bent knee to your chest with your leg underwater also targets these muscles for strengthening.
Holding the edge of the pool and kicking with your feet together, starting the movement from your hips and allowing your thighs and lower legs to follow in a wave-like motion helps tone your back, buttocks and abdominal muscles. Other exercises include chest flys, performed with your arms under the water, and side stretches to strengthen your upper back and oblique muscles.
Cardiovascular Exercise
Regular cardiovascular exercise, such as water aerobics, raises your heart rate and helps strengthen most of the major muscles in your body. Even simple exercises, such as walking or jogging along the bottom of the pool, treading water or kicking while holding onto the side, engage your abdominal and back muscles, helping you strengthen your core and alleviate lower back pain.
Benefits
Exercising in the water alleviates pressure on your spine and joints, allowing you to move more freely and with less pain than traditional exercises. Toning your back muscles with exercises in an aqua aerobics program helps improve your posture and reduces the risk of injury by strengthening the muscles that support your spine and hips.
While you can use additional equipment while exercising in the water, the water itself provides enough resistance for you to strengthen your back without additional weights or devices. Because doing aerobics in the water makes you naturally buoyant, you may find you can stretch and move further than you can on land.
Considerations
While you can do aqua aerobics on your own in a home or community pool, enrolling in a class will help you learn how to perform back-strengthening moves safely and efficiently. Start with low repetitions of each exercise if you have chronic back pain or a spinal condition; three to five repetitions three or four times a week is sufficient for most people with back pain. As your strength and endurance increase and your back symptoms subside, add more repetitions or use weights to increase resistance.
References
- Arthritis Foundation: Water Exercise
- "Fitness" Magazine; Slim Down in a Splash: Pool Workout; Lara McGlashan
- Spine-Health; Back Exercises and Abdominal Exercise Recommendations; Thomas E. Hyde, D.C.; October 2006
- Spine-Health; Abdominal Exercises and Back Exercises - Getting Started; Thomas E. Hyde, D.C.; October 2006
- Spine-Health; Abdominal Exercises; Thomas E. Hyde, D.C.; October 2006
- Spine-Health; Back Exercises; Thomas E. Hyde, D.C.; October 2006
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