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Water Aerobics Fits the Needs of Seniors and Injured Athletes As Well As Those Who Just Want a Good Workout

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By KATE MCGRAW For the Journal

Michelle Montoya got into the evening water aerobics class with her husband, Samuel, when she was three months pregnant with her son, who's now 20 months old. The stretching and relaxation on her inner thighs helped her in the delivery room, she claimed. She stopped for a while after the baby was born, but told her husband about eight months ago, "We need to go back to the pool. I need the exercise."

Ellen Marie Arias has been doing water aerobics for five years on Monday and Wednesday evenings.

"It was just the beginning of mid-life," she said of the drive to begin exercising. Water aerobics made her feel so good she began exploring other fitness activities. Now she does yoga and weight training as well.

For Jean Berinati, water aerobics was a gift in her senior years. A nine-year veteran of the Tuesday and Thursday morning class, she said, "It's healthy for older bodies. It's good for arthritis, because it does not load up the joints."

When People magazine did a celebrityworkout spread a while back, the editors found one water baby among all the gym rats and yoga mice. Singer Mariah Carey said she liked her five-days-a-week water aerobics workout because "splashing around is a lot less bleak than sitting in a boring gym. I love the water!"

Skewing younger

Carey was just echoing what many people had discovered before her. Long dismissed as an old ladies' exercise, water aerobics is gaining favor among younger folk.

Aerobic exercise is any physical exercise that increases your heart rate and your intake of oxygen long enough to benefit your general conditioning. The great benefit of water aerobics, said Santa Fe Community College counselor and part-time fitness instructor Janelle Johnson, is the lowered impact on the body's joints. Water aerobics also exercise all muscles at the same time, and allows the body to stay cooler since the person is in water.

Most water aerobics are performed in shallow water, so the feet touch the pool bottom occasionally. There is about 10 percent of the impact there would be with the same exercises -- running in place, jumping jacks, etc. -- done on land.

Johnson, however, teaches an "Aquatics for Fitness" class at SFCC that occurs in the deep end of the pool. Participants wear buoyancy belts and/or cuffs so they stay upright.

"It's great for people with different musculo-skeletal issues who can't do any weightbearing moves," she said. "I also often have athletes rehabbing an injury, or retraining a specific problem area."

So if you work hard enough at water aerobics, there's a definite cardiovascular and muscular benefit. And, as Carey noted, the pleasure principle is part of it.

"It's my favorite exercise," said Mary Mitchell, in her seventies, who also walks daily to keep as much mobility as possible in her two knee replacements. "When I'm in the water, I just feel free!"

"There's something soothing about being in water," Arias said. "And there's a different feel when you've finished. With weight training, you're concentrating on pushing yourself to the limits. With water aerobics, you can do as much or as little as you want in a given class, and you feel more refreshed and invigorated afterward."

"We have a good instructor," she added of the Fort Marcy evening class. "He keeps us on our toes -- sometimes literally!" She meant city recreation supervisor Billy Rivera, who also works as a personal trainer for private clients and who is known for leading brisker workouts than the rotating instructors who serve the morning classes' older population.

Finding the right fit

Some instructors work their classes harder than others. Picking a class that works for your needs is easy, with the city pools' dropin fee structure.

"We get a younger population at the evening class," Rivera, 32, said. "They're faithful on Monday and Wednesday nights. Technically, the class meets Fridays at 6, too, but that's pretty hit and miss, especially as it gets colder. In the summertime, we're real busy."

Water aerobics is the perfect exercise for people who have injuries or are more prone to injuries, Rivera said. The exercises will help people with osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia and other fatiguing, painful conditions.

"It's very low-impact and yet you can still get a cardiovascular and resistance workout without stress on the joints," Rivera said.

And, as he acknowledged, with your body underwater and the instructor on land, you can be working at your own pace without the feeling of being judged by the teacher or classmates. That non- competitive component can be especially important to seniors beginning regular exercise, sometimes for the first time in their lives.

Rivera, admired for his stamina and creativity by the evening younger class, admitted he'd only taught Fort Marcy's morning class once.

"They're a generally older population," he said, adding carefully: "They're a little more finicky and resistant to change."

Source: Albuquerque Journal

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