Aqua Running
Aqua running is not only a fantastic means of maintaining your fitness whilst recovering from injury, but may also be substituted into your training programme to speed recovery and reduce the risk of an overuse injury when training hard.
Our staff have a special interest in running injuries and are trained in the techniques of aqua-running. We are able to advise on the most appropriate method and help you find the most efficient technique to simulate land running to help improve or maintain your fitness levels. We have many previous success stories to tell which include elite sportsmen and women through to amateur athletes.
Our state of the art pool is specifically designed to allow for several forms of aquatic running.
Here are the 3 main options.
- Deep water running
- Running into the variable speed current
- Shallow water running
Deep water running
This is by far the most popular method of aquatic running in our pool. A technique that closely replicates running motion on land but without your feet touching the floor which vastly reduces the load applied to the body. By simulating a good running action with the help of buoyancy suits and aqua-jogging shoes this allows you to improve run fitness levels and strengthen running specific muscles without placing high levels of stress on your soft tissues, bones and joints.
Plyometric pad running into current
This involves running on a down sloping underwater plyometric pad whilst leaning into a constant stream of water which holds you in position. When your body is submerged to the top of your shoulders your body weight is reduced by approximately 90% through buoyancy offloading, which vastly reduces the ground reaction forces associated with running on land.
Shallow water
Running in waist deep water reduces body weight by approximately 50-60% and allows for some faster drill work and gives a method to start reintroducing some more loading to the body as recovery progresses.
We have the best aqua-running equipment available to help you get the best out of your sessions:
- AQX Buoyancy suits to help suspend you in the water and position the body in the optimum posture to run
- AQX Aqua-running shoes with strategically placed resistance fins to increase the workout by up to 30%
- Aqua-jogging belts
- A 1.8 metre deep Aqua-running well for deep water running.
- A 45 degree running pad where you can run into our variable speed current
While Aqua-running is often used as a low or non-impact form of maintaining fitness perhaps during injury, it can stand on its own for achieving excellent fitness and cardiovascular results. Running in water is a total body exercise that works your legs, core and upper body, and also gives your cardiovascular system a thorough workout too.
Jogging on land for 30 minutes will burn around 200 calories whereas the same length of time aqua-jogging will burn around 350 calories. This makes aqua-jogging a fantastic exercise to include as part of an all round wellbeing program.
Click on the links below to read about runners who benefitted from aqua running with us:
http://www.aqua-physio.co.uk/news/article/jp-left-5th-metatarsal-pain-after-running
http://www.aqua-physio.co.uk/news/article/er-competitive-club-runner