Water is an incredible tool for both physical therapy rehab and performance training due to its natural properties.

AQUATIC PHYSICAL THERAPY

Water creates buoyancy, which means it makes you lighter thereby reducing impact of exercises. For this reason, pool therapy is great for patients that have too much pain or weakness at full body weight. Whether you are post operative, or suffering from chronic low back pain, or are just getting back to running and jumping after injury or surgery, the buoyancy of the pool water creates the perfect environment for a gradual return to activity at full body weight.

Water also creates a graded pressure effect, which means the deeper you go the more pressure there is. Therefore, the water creates a natural retro flow of the blood from the limbs back into the circulatory system and back to the heart. This makes pool exercises great for reducing swelling and inflammation, even with lymphatic diseases.

AQUATIC PERFORMANCE TRAINING

These two properties of water make aquatic performance training ideal for athletes as well, and is the reason we typically do a pool workout as a mid week active recovery! The graded pressure of the water helps reduce muscle soreness by pushing lactic acid and metabolites from the limbs back into the circulatory system, leaving you feeling refreshed and recovered.

The buoyancy also leads to very little absorption or eccentric force with landing, but also creates resistance to all concentric forces. What does this mean? It means we can work on concentric power (ie jumping) with limited eccentric forces (landing) which are the forces that make you sore!