The pool as the new gym (water workouts)

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The pool as the new gym

Water workouts have gone high-performance: more resistance with less

risk

By Roy M. Wallack, Special to The Times

August 6, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-

water6aug06,1,502608.story?coll=la-headlines-health

Say " water workouts " and this is the image that usually comes to

mind: members of an aquarobics class, all of them 70-plus,

performing mild pec flies, bicep curls and other dumbbell-type

movements as they walk leisurely around the pool.

But here, at Frog's Fitness in Spring Valley, east of San Diego, the

students' hands are enclosed in perforated yellow, red and blue

plastic domes. And an hour up Interstate 5 in a pool in Santa

Margarita, Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers is gasping for

breath as he works out with the same aquatic dumbbells.

Wearing matching strap-on ankle fins, the All-Pro safety with the

wild mane of hair and the 2006 Superbowl championship ring thrashes

his hands and feet back and forth so fast he appears to be having a

seizure. He does hip rotations, hamstring kick-backs, low-ab twists

and various upper body exercises, all at a manic pace that bubbles

the water like a washing machine. " Faster, faster! " yells his coach.

When the 40-minute workout ends, Polamalu is exhausted but happy. " I

love this, " he says. " It's an extremely tough, high-intensity

workout, but not so taxing on your joints. That's the most important

factor -- you can fire up the nervous system without getting

injured. "

Once limited to senior fitness programs, athlete rehab and mild

water running, water workouts are going high-performance. The pool

is becoming a fitness factory for all ages and all levels of

athletic conditioning, with special high-performance water-workout

gear helping to create and accelerate the trend.

In the NFL, HydroWorks pools with built-in treadmills, water jets

and TV cameras have become training staples for the Philadelphia

Eagles and Green Bay Packers.

" You can increase cardiovascular fitness, running form, balance and

even some strength with less normal wear and tear on your joints, "

says Eagles head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder. In the elite

running world, water workouts made a splash last fall when Kenyan

distance star Lornah Kiplagat set the 10-mile world record after

spending the seven days before hand running in the pool with AQx

aqua running shoes, which have plastic scoops that increase

resistance.

Developing 'strength-speed'

Marv Marinovich, the poolside coach barking out orders to Polamalu,

says water resistance can improve weight-room style strength and

power for any athlete.

The former Raiders lineman and strength trainer, long known for an

unconventional program that avoids traditional weight lifting, is

pioneering a new genre: water plyometrics.

Plyometrics are rapid-fire, stop-start, explosive exercises that

work on the principle that stretching a muscle right before it

contracts fires more bundles of muscle fibers than starting from a

stopped position. Plyometrics enhance performance because they build

power, which Marinovich describes as " strength-speed " -- how quickly

force can be applied. The result is instant speed when it's needed --

to hit a tennis ball, to swerve away from an open car door when on

a bike, to catch yourself when you trip.

The need for plyometric power and speed turned Marinovich into an

instant aqua-convert last summer when he saw the perforated water

dumbbells from AquaLogix. The company touts its products' " omni-

directional resistance, " which means that aqua-bells and fins

provide resistance from every direction as they are dragged through

the water. Unlike regular weights, they work both agonist and

antagonist muscles at once, providing resistance to, say, a bicep

curl as well as the returning tricep push-down.

The idea of drag resistance isn't new. Hydro-Tone of Huntington

Beach developed the idea two decades ago. A recent University of

Hawaii study found that Hydro-Tones' bulkier, rectangular dumbbells

were better for pure strength than AquaLogix, which it favored for

more fluid, omni-directional movements. Both types offer a

significant benefit vis-à-vis regular weights and land-based

plyometrics: They are virtually injury-proof.

" Injuries can be a problem with plyometrics, " says physical

therapist Forster, co-author of " The Complete Water Power

Workout Book " and director of the Phase IV performance center in

Santa . " But doing it in the water eliminates that risk. "

A 2004 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research

found that aquatic plyometrics provided the same performance

enhancement benefits as land plyometrics, with significantly less

soreness.

Athletes see good results

Being able to train harder, without injury risk, has yielded

positive results for Marinovich's clients. Former Stanford running

back J.R. Lemon, a 23-year-old NFL free agent who did the water

workouts last winter, says his " first step " got faster and his

vertical jump increased by 4 inches. Polamalu, who has no numbers

yet, since he just began the aqua workouts in June, was impressed

enough to commit to a twice-a-week schedule. Six-foot-four Northern

Oklahoma College basketball guard Nick Kovachevich says he couldn't

dunk regularly until he did four water workouts with Marinovich a

year ago but lost his vertical leap when he didn't continue on his

own at school. At the Christmas break, he worked out five days a

week and got his dunk back. " Now I'm afraid not to use it, " he says

of the AquaLogix workout.

Marinovich's prized pupil is Dylan Price, a junior at Mater Dei High

School in Santa Ana who rehabbed a knee injury earlier this year

with three weekly aqua workouts and ran a 4.53-second 40-yard dash

in his first summer football practice, compared with a former best

of 4.6 seconds. " I'm so fluid and loose now, " Price says. " This is

the fastest I've ever been -- even though I actually haven't been

doing any running. "

During a recent workout, he pulsed his legs and arms back and forth

in changing directions so rapidly that it seemed as though he was

having spasms. Marinovich calls what Price was doing " bubbling " -- a

hyperspeed-plyometrics he thinks will prove to be his great new

contribution to the science of athletic conditioning. " Bubbling

trains the nervous system to send signals to the body to respond

faster, " he says. " This is the great overlooked part of training.

People don't recognize the nervous-system stuff yet, but they will.

It's key. "

Bubbling or not, water workouts can be effective. Audrey Adler, a

Los Angeles personal training who obtained a set of Aqualogix bells

after seeing them at a trade show, has her clients, all middle-aged

women with pools, simply mimic standard gym exercises, such as

jumping jacks, flies, bicep curls and trunk twists. " It leaves them

refreshed but -- as they soon discover -- worked to the bone, " she

says. " They call me two days later and say their muscles still feel

it. Every one of them loves the workout. "

As the word gets out, innovations that might have once seemed goofy

are becoming cutting-edge.

Tim di Francesco, a physical therapist-trainer in Swampscott, Mass.,

says he got good results when he set up a hoop over his office's

aqua-tread for his clients who play basketball. " People are getting

the message, " he says. " The water is becoming the new gym. "