Water Workouts: Less Pain, More Gain

 

Researchers were interested in finding out which type of workout would help people find the most relief—land-based exercise (a mixture of walking, cycling, aerobics and dumbbell lifts) or water-based exercise (aquatic calisthenics done in chest-to-neck high water in a pool heated to 94°F).

 

The patients were split into three groups. One group did one-hour water exercises three times a week for eight weeks with a trained physiotherapist. Another group did land exercises for the same amount of time with the same trained physiotherapist. And a third group performed no exercise (the control).

 

At the end of the study, when each group was asked to perform a walking test to measure endurance, members of the water group could walk 118% farther than they could at the start of the study, on average…the land group’s distance improved, too, but only by 53%…and the control group actually got weaker—their distance was 13% shorter.

 

Also, the people who had been exercising in a pool saw a 9% decrease in shortness of breath and a 13% decrease in fatigue by the end of the study…while the people who had been exercising on land saw only a 4% decrease in shortness of breath and a 3% decrease in fatigue.

 

Contra-conventional Wisdom

So why did water workouts come out on top? “Water may have helped more for a few reasons. First of all, you have the effect of buoyancy, which supports your weight and reduces impact on your joints,” said McNamara. “Warm water also helps with pain control and increases blood flow to muscles. Plus, water offers resistance to all your movements, so your muscles work harder, and that strengthens them.”

What’s ironic is that it wasn’t all that long ago that people with COPD were warned not to do water-based exercise. Doctors worried that the water would compress the chest and that the exertion would stress the heart. But studies that have analyzed COPD and water exercise under controlled conditions (as in, when patients were under the watchful eye of a health professional) have shown that these fears are unfounded, said McNamara.

 

GET YOUR GOGGLES ON!

Now that we have these study results, if you suffer from COPD as well as obesity, joint problems or back pain, you owe it to yourself to talk to your doctor or physical therapist about trying pool-based therapy with a trained health professional. (If you have COPD but none of those other conditions…or if you have one of the other conditions but not COPD…or if you suffer from a different type of respiratory problem…you may still find pool-based therapy to be more beneficial than land exercises, so it’s worth a try, said McNamara.)

 

Source: Renae McNamara, BAppSc (Phty), clinical specialist physiotherapist, pumonary rehabilition, clinical and rehabilitation sciences, University of Sydney, and department of respiratory and sleep medicine and department of physiotherapy, Prince of Wales Hospital, New South Wales, Australia.