Swimming pools are a fantastic thing to own if you want a great way to be able to relax and unwind in the evenings. They’re absolutely ideal for closing your eyes and just letting the water take the weight off your feet while you try to forget the worries of the day you’ve just had in the office or wherever else. Throw in a lilo and a cocktail and you have absolute bliss.
But swimming pools aren’t just about relaxation, in fact many people will invest in pools for precisely the opposite reasons: never has there been a more enjoyable way to burn calories, tone your muscle and generally build up your strength.
And actually swimming pools are also great for providing a particularly highly varied range of options for getting into shape. Far from just being useful for swimming, there are many different ways you can use a swimming pool to improve your fitness and strength, and keeping your training varied is important if you want to get the most results from your efforts. Read on and we’ll take a look at some of the best and most varied ways you can use a pool to get into shape.
Swimming
Let’s start with the most obvious: swimming. Of course swimming is a fantastic way to burn calories but also to build muscles thanks to the resistance. If you watch athletic swimmers on television then you’ll see that they often have very strong lats as well as pecs and leg muscles. Combine that with a washboard stomach and you’ve got a great physique that anyone would be interested in obtaining.
And if you don’t want to just swim lengths then you can make life tougher on yourself to enjoy even more exaggerated benefits: by swimming with just your arms for instance for a brilliant upper body workout, or by trying to beat your times and thus swimming incredibly quickly.
Aqua Aerobics
Another well-known way to improve your strength in a swimming pool is to perform aqua aerobics. This normally involves listening to music and watching an instructional video that will guide you through a number of movements that burn energy and force you to move your limbs quickly against the resistance of the water thus toning your muscles.
Treading Water
Treading water is a great way to exercise in a pool not least because it is a little more relaxed than some of the other methods and because it’s much better suited to multitasking. Treading water of course involves just kicking your legs and arms out in order to remain on the spot, and this is a great way to keep yourself constantly moving while still having your head still enough to watch some TV that’s on indoors for examples.
Weight Lifting
You might not associate a swimming pool with weight lifting, but actually this is a popular way to build muscle. Really it should be called weight ‘pushing’ though, as the main idea is to push weights down and to prevent them from raising as opposed to lifting them up. This is possible because the weights are floats that naturally attempt to float themselves to the top.
Circuits
Using weight lifting, treading water, aqua aerobics and swimming, you can actually do a range of different circuits in a swimming pool that will again keep you constantly moving and that will train your body in a number of different ways.
Even more interesting though is to do a circuit outside of the pool, and to turn the pool into a part of that. For instance you could run the length of your garden, drop and do fifty press ups, swim back, then drop and do fifty sit-ups. This would create a much more ‘all over’ and far more interesting workout than most people manage around the home. Throw in a stationary bike or a lap of the block and you almost have your own triathlon you can use in your hope!
If you want to get into great shape then, start looking for swimming pool companies and thinking about how you are going to use your new pool in creative ways!
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License: Creative Commons image source
License: Creative Commons image source
License: Creative Commons image source
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Ian Adams, the author of this post, leads a team of designers at B-Rod Pool Services, reputable swimming pool company in Fairfield, CT. Ian is an ardent reader and is a massive fan of Stephen King.
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