Benefits of Water

• Water provides a safe environment for reducing joint stiffness and pain, while improving joint flexibility, muscle strength, coordination, stamina and even your balance!
• Swimming ability is not required. You will be walking in the shallow end of the pool.
• The buoyancy of the water allows you to exercise without placing strain on the joints and muscles.

Exercise Routine

Walking in the pool is the same pattern as on land. Forward walking is heel, ball (of the foot), toe. Backwards walking is toe, ball heel. Hold your head up high and breathe normally.

1. Walk across the pool with arms swinging as if you are walking on land
2. Walk backwards across the pool with arms out as if you are going to hug someone and pull the water toward you like a reverse breaststroke.
3. Walk side to side with arms going up to the surface of the water and pulling them down each time your legs come together. Walk one width of the pool leading with your left leg and come back across the pool leading with the right leg.
4. Walk across the pool, high stepping like a majorette with arms straight up and down like a wooden soldier, then change to a long, straight wooden soldier leg and majorette arms
5. Add different arm patterns such as gerbil wheel or rumba arms to make the workout interesting and to work all joints and muscles of your body.
6. Walk in a box pattern by adding all of these exercises together…Walk forward 3 step, pause to maintain your balance, then walk sideways for 3 steps, pause, then to the left for 3, pause and finish walking backwards for 3 steps and pause. You just made a box and added interest and intensity to your walk in the pool.
7. For balance, try standing on one leg and use a sculling motion with your hands to maintain your balance. Change to the other leg.

Exercise tips and safety

• For a total body workout, exercise the upper back, chest, arms, legs, hips and legs.
• Breathe normally and if you get winded, slow down. If the workout is too easy, increase the speed a little. Keeping your arms and legs long such as in wooden soldier walk is more difficult than a walk in #1 above.

• Start your walk slowly to warm up your joints and muscles and increase your speed as tolerated.
• Experiment with different arm movements to keep your walk in the pool interesting and fun.
• Your workout can be as long as 45 minutes if the heat index and sun are not too hot but start with 20 minutes and work up to 45 minutes.
• Do not walk toward deep water or exercise alone.
• You can still get dehydrated in the pool so have a bottle of water on the deck. You are sweating, you just don’t feel it!
• Have a chair on the deck to sit for a few minutes after your walk in the pool. You exercise in a buoyant environment in the pool that is the opposite of gravity and when you reach that last step you are now supporting the entire weight of your body.
• Have fun and stay cool!

For more information or to locate an aquatic class near you go to
www.arthritis.org and type in your state to locate the Arthritis chapter near you.

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