Aqua Running

highchap

Can anyone give me advice on aqua running. I have been suffering from an achilles problem on and off for 4 years and was wondering if there was a benefit to doing sessions in the pool?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

fiddy3

Wear a heart rate monitor if you have one. Your HR will be about 10 beats lower for similar effort to dry land because of the water pressure, so you have to consciously work a lot harder to get similar benefit. It's painfully boring, so make sure to mix up sessions all the time to keep your will to live. On your easy days in the pool, it's good to do something like a 30-60sec surge every 3mins to keep HR at a reasonable level as it can slip down well under recovery effort very easily. Use much much shorter recoveries than you would while running, sessions like 5min, 4min, 3, 2, 1 and back up again with 30secs recovery are good to make an hour pass quickly, or 6-10x 3mins hard, 30secs easy, 1min hard. Get as close as possible to running form, which isn't easy. There's two schools of thought on technique, short strokes is like cycling in a light gear, it puts more pressure on your cardio system, however longer strokes/strides are closer to running form but obviously your turnover is much slower than real running, and this also makes it more of a strength session. It's tough, but there's enough stories out there of people making amazing returns to fitness quickly after spending months on the sidelines and just aquajogging, so its definitely a great option whether you're injured or just looking for an extra cross training option.

wideball

fiddy3 wrote: »

Wear a heart rate monitor if you have one. Your HR will be about 10 beats lower for similar effort to dry land because of the water pressure, so you have to consciously work a lot harder to get similar benefit. It's painfully boring, so make sure to mix up sessions all the time to keep your will to live. On your easy days in the pool, it's good to do something like a 30-60sec surge every 3mins to keep HR at a reasonable level as it can slip down well under recovery effort very easily. Use much much shorter recoveries than you would while running, sessions like 5min, 4min, 3, 2, 1 and back up again with 30secs recovery are good to make an hour pass quickly, or 6-10x 3mins hard, 30secs easy, 1min hard. Get as close as possible to running form, which isn't easy. There's two schools of thought on technique, short strokes is like cycling in a light gear, it puts more pressure on your cardio system, however longer strokes/strides are closer to running form but obviously your turnover is much slower than real running, and this also makes it more of a strength session. It's tough, but there's enough stories out there of people making amazing returns to fitness quickly after spending months on the sidelines and just aquajogging, so its definitely a great option whether you're injured or just looking for an extra cross training option.

Very good points above. I'm currently injured and I'm 3 weeks into aqua running with cycling. The key thing in the aqua work outs are the interval type sessions highlighted above.

I've found this link good http://www.pfitzinger.com/labreports/water.shtml and the workouts http://www.pfitzinger.com/labreports/9wkH2O.htm a good resource.

I'm doing 3 sessions a week, one "regular" interval as described by the OP, a pyramid type interval and then a long steady, continous run (boring). Increase the reps, length etc week on week.

The key guide is the HR to gauge how hard you are working. It's true your HR will be lower in the pool relative to running on land, so its important to work hard in the interval. I try to concentrate on running form also.

I definitely feel the benefit fitness wise from the aqua running.