Soak Up Strength: How To Build Muscle In The Pool

When building strength, our minds often go to weight rooms and cardio machines. But did you know that there’s one more area of the gym where you can build strength without heavy weights or climbing the stair machine for hours – and have a little fun while you’re at it? 

Swimming and water fitness classes are often celebrated as full-body workouts that improve cardiovascular health and aid in weight loss. Still, one aspect of pool workouts that is sometimes overlooked is its potential for building muscle. Whether you’re a fitness enthusiast or just looking to add variety to your workout routine, the pool can be an excellent place to develop strength and muscle. Let’s delve deeper into how taking your workouts to the pool can take your strength to an entirely different level!

The Resistance of Water

Water provides natural resistance, which is about 12 times greater than air. This resistance is omnidirectional, meaning it works against your movements in every direction, unlike gravity-bound exercises on land that primarily work against vertical resistance. Because of this unique quality, moving through water requires more effort than moving through the air –every move you make while in the water will engage your muscles more fully as you pull and push against the water, which can help build muscle strength and endurance. This omnidirectional water resistance also challenges the muscles to stabilize the body from all angles, promoting balanced muscle development and enhancing overall stability. 

Low-Impact Strength Training

One of the key benefits of working out in the water is that it’s a low-impact activity. This makes it an excellent option for people who have joint issues, are recovering from injuries, or want to reduce the risk of overuse injuries. Water’s buoyancy reduces the effective weight of the body. This weight reduction minimizes stress on joints and allows for safer movements, especially for individuals with joint issues or injuries. Reduced impact encourages a greater range of motion and dynamic stability exercises that might be too challenging on land. 

The natural instability of water also requires constant engagement of the core muscles to maintain balance and posture. Activities such as water walking, jogging, or flotation devices intensify this effect, making the core muscles work harder to stabilize the body.  

Add Intensity with Our Favorite Pool “Toys”

To maximize muscle-building potential, you can incorporate various pieces of equipment designed to work with the water to build strength and stability:

Kickboards: When using a kickboard, your upper body is supported, allowing you to focus solely on your legs. This isolation helps target the leg muscles more effectively than when working with the arms during regular swimming strokes.

Aquatic Dumbbells: As previously mentioned, water provides continuous resistance in all directions. When using water dumbbells, muscles work against this resistance during both the upward and downward movements, effectively doubling the workout compared to traditional weights, where resistance is primarily against gravity. Exercises with water dumbbells engage multiple muscle groups simultaneously. For example, an aquatic bicep curl trains the biceps and engages the shoulders, chest, and core muscles to stabilize the movement against water resistance.

Pool Noodles: The buoyancy of pool noodles can be used to create additional resistance. Pushing a buoyant noodle into the water or trying to submerge it engages the muscles, particularly in the upper body and core. Using pool noodles can also engage multiple muscle groups at once. For example, a noodle push-down exercise works the shoulders, chest, and arms while engaging the core for stability.

Fins: Fins increase the surface area of the foot, which can increase resistance when kicking through the water with intensity. This additional resistance requires more effort from the leg muscles, particularly the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and calves, leading to increased strength. Intensity matters when it comes to swimming with fins, so make sure your efforts in the water match your desired outcome of increased strength!

Hand paddles: Much like fins, hand paddles increase the surface area of the hand, which means more resistance when pulling through the water. This added resistance requires more effort from the muscles, particularly the shoulders, chest, back, and arms. The increased resistance forces the muscles to work harder during each stroke, promoting muscle growth and endurance. This continuous effort helps to build upper body strength over time.

Apart from traditional swimming, the pool offers various other exercises that can help build muscle:

Water Fitness Group Classes: These classes often incorporate strength-based water movements like jogging, leg lifts, and arm curls to help build muscle. View our class schedules to see all our Water Fitness Classes and find the one that is right for you!

Water Resistance Training: Would you prefer to do your own thing? No sweat! Hop in the pool with your workout that incorporates strength-based water exercises. Need help planning your workout? Below, we’ve put together some things to consider when planning your water workouts. Plus, we’ve included a workout you can do alone!

Considerations For Structuring Your Water Workout          

1. Start with an appropriate warm-up: Preparing your entire body for any workout, whether on land or in the water, is essential. Some ideas for your water warm-up include swimming easy to moderate-intensity laps for a set length of time or a number of laps, easy jogging or skipping without additional equipment, or a combination of the above.

2. Choose your equipment: Knowing what you plan to use can help you plan your workouts in the pool. Pick 1-2 pieces of equipment to keep the setup simple. Also, know the pool area setup where you plan to do your water workout. If your water workout consists mainly of equipment-based exercises and not much lap swimming, please use the fitness pool (where classes are taught) instead of the lap pool if your AMFAM location offers one.

3. Decide your training focus: Do you want to train the upper body, lower body, or total body? Do you like to complete one exercise before moving on to the next, or do you want to do a series of 2 or more exercises back-to-back with rest periods between rounds? As with any workout, the possibilities for structure are endless, so decide your primary area of focus for training and then select exercises that will train those areas.

4. Recovery: It’s beneficial to give your body time to cool down and recover after any workout, especially in water. Walk a few laps in the water to bring your heart rate down and use the wall for stability while doing stretches that target the muscles you trained in your workout.

Incorporating these pool exercises into your fitness routine can help you build strength, improve endurance, and enhance overall muscle tone in a fun and refreshing way. So grab your swimsuit and slip into the pool – your muscles will thank you!