Benefits of a Swimming Treadmill

A swimming treadmill looks like a fun gadget, but it’s more than just a toy. It provides a variety of benefits, including weight loss, pain relief, rehab and more.

The natural buoyancy of water reduces the strain on muscles and joints. It also provides resistance. This combination helps people of all abilities achieve more with their workouts than they could on land.

Reduced Joint Pain

The buoyancy of the water in a treadmill pool reduces the impact on joints and bones during walking, running or exercise. This makes the aquatic treadmill ideal for individuals who experience joint pain.

According to a TAMU study, using the underwater treadmill for walking and specific strength training exercises (prescribed by swimming treadmill your physical therapist) enhances joint flexibility and decreases stiffness in knees and hips more than land-based walking. Additionally, angular velocity (the speed and direction of movement in the knee) increased more after aquatic exercise than land-based workouts.

Patients with hip and leg injuries or conditions like spinal stenosis find that walking on the aquatic treadmill reduces joint stress, helps them walk more normally and enables them to continue exercising at a similar level to before their injury. This ability to continue their fitness routines in a non-weight bearing environment encourages positive thinking and accelerates the recovery process.

Walking in a therapeutic pool also builds muscle strength. A TAMU study showed that swimming and aquatic treadmills both improve hip, leg and foot strength, while adding to core strength.

Improved Posture

Using an underwater treadmill can help you strengthen your core and legs while also improving your posture. This is because the buoyancy of water helps reduce body weight, which in turn relieves pressure on your joints and muscles. This is why many people with joint pain find relief during aquatic exercise.

A swimming treadmill can also improve your balance and posture by teaching you how to walk with healthy, symmetrical form. This is important for preventing falls, which are a common cause of injury for older adults. Practicing walking with good form in the water can also give you confidence in your ability to complete everyday tasks and sports without fear of falling.

You can also use an underwater treadmill to practice running or exercising in a controlled environment. The water provides resistance, which is a great way to challenge yourself and push your limits during a workout. You can increase the intensity of your workout by increasing the speed of the treadmill or adding jets that provide increased resistance against your core, leg and arm muscles.

Muscle Strengthening

When you exercise in water, your muscles can exert more power without absorbing as much of the impact. That translates into greater muscle strength, especially in your legs and core. This is because water allows you to train at a higher intensity than you could in the gym and it also reduces something called muscle soreness by improving your range of motion around the joints, decreasing swelling and reducing what’s known as “blood pooling” where blood pools in the muscles rather than returning to the heart.

Water treadmills make it easy to increase your exercise intensity by adjusting the depth of the water. The deeper you are, the more your bodyweight is submerged, and that increases the resistance on your muscles. You can also add a current to your workout to increase the difficulty and challenge your muscles. For example, if you’re training for an obstacle race, you can hold onto the rails to work your ab muscles by swimming against the current. This will help you perform the exercise at a higher intensity and increase your speed.

Increased Cardiovascular Endurance

A strong cardiovascular system can supply your cells with the oxygen you need while exercising at medium- to high intensity for a long period of time without becoming tired. Exercise helps you maintain this endurance, which is the key to a healthier lifestyle and reducing your risk for heart and blood vessel conditions.

Increasing your cardiovascular endurance can also help you burn more calories when you exercise. This helps you manage your weight and keep your metabolism healthy so that you can maintain a lower body fat percentage.

Cardiovascular endurance can be improved by activities such as walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, dancing and group sports like volleyball and pickleball. The underwater treadmill, also known swimming treadmill as an aquatic ergometer, offers a variety of workouts to build this endurance without straining your joints and muscles.

The versatility of this training method allows you to choose your preferred level of difficulty to meet your specific needs and fitness goals. For example, you can walk, jog or run at your own pace, and use different workouts like interval training to boost your heart rate.

Reduced Risk of Falling

A swimming treadmill enables weight-bearing exercise for patients with heart and respiratory diseases who cannot exercise on land. However, the increased resistance of water demands more effort from your muscles and respiratory system, and patients should not be exercised to the point of fatigue. Your physician will exercise you conservatively so that you can finish your workout without panting.

Water-based walking or running exercises also provide a more natural gait pattern than on a traditional treadmill, improving your joint flexion and extension. This is particularly important for injured athletes with reduced stifle and hock flexion, such as those recovering from anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries.

One study used a two-arm, randomized controlled design to compare the effectiveness of treadmill-slip perturbation training versus treadmill control training among healthy community-dwelling older adults. Both participants and investigators who conducted the experiment were blinded to their group assignment. Although treadmill-slip training significantly improved the ability of older adults to avoid a novel laboratory-reproduced slip, these improvements were far less than the motor adaptation associated with over-ground slip-prevention training.