Aqua Jogging - More than Just Recovery Training

Lately aqua jogging is becoming more popular. It is an especially useful exercise as for runners recovering from injury. 

When you picture aqua jogging you may picture elderly ladies splashing around the water, gossiping. This not so far fetched, but water jogging can be quite exhausting. Experienced runners can increase their endurance, performance and speed with this exercise, and it is perfect for  people who want to lose weight because you burn a lot more calories than you do walking.

What's aqua jogging?

Aqua jogging is exactly what it sounds like. You run through the water. You can buy a special vest or weight belt to add buoyancy or resistance. To jog, you float in the water and simply run, even though there is nothing simple about it. 
Water is 800 times denser than air. This means that it is much more strenuous than running, even though there are practically no effects felt from gravity in water.

What are the advantages aqua jogging?

Aqua jogging has many advantages. As mentioned above, water is much denser than air. That makes this sport very tiring. Nevertheless, it is suitable for everyone because it is an iso-kinetic exercise. This means that you determine the difficulty yourself. If you do not move, you have no resistance, but the faster you perform the movements, the more difficult the exercise is. The benefits:

• The risk of injury is minimal. The most dangerous thing in aqua jogging is the way to the swimming pool.
• You train your whole body: the legs, arms, shoulders, and core are all trained.  In addition, training in water trains lots of muscles at the same time. 
• Endurance, coordination and strength are simultaneously improved.
• One of the biggest advantages is that the joints and tendons are not stressed. Running means putting your body under a lot of shock stress, which is mainly responsible for strains or injury. You can't fall while aqua jogging!
• There is no eccentric loading. Eccentric means that a tense muscle is stretched by the force. This can lead to small muscle injuries, like sore muscles. When training in the water these burdens fall away.

Tips for Starting: If you want to try out aqua jogging, here are a few tips for getting started. 

• Warm up. As with any other sport, you should get up to operating temperature before you get started properly.
• Use a heart rate monitor. Unlike regular running, no one notices if you slow down in the water. You can even wear a waterproof heart rate monitor. Due to the water pressure, the maximum heart rate is actually lower by about 10 beats.
• Take a class! The movement you do during the aqua jogging is not the same as when running. You have to get used to it. In order to get the most out of the exercise, you should take a course where you get shown the proper technique.
• Avoid getting bored! To avoid boredom, shake things up and mix in other exercises.

Aqua jogging is a complete sport that can be practiced by anyone. It is a perfect match, especially for runner. You can use it not only to improve your performance in general, without the risk of being injured.