Many of my recent articles have been about various ways to prevent injury. But unfortunately, our best efforts are sometimes not enough, and we get injured anyways. When you’ve run too far, too fast, or too much and you’ve done some damage to your body, you’ve got to let it heal. But runners are notoriously tenacious and defensive about their fitness. They don’t want to lose what they worked so hard for! It’s this attitude that often gets them into trouble in the first place. But more to the point, if you have suffered an injury that is going to require some time off, you are probably going to want to do something to maintain your fitness. Among the most popular methods is aqua jogging, sometimes also called deep water running. Today’s article looks at some of the science behind how aqua jogging is done and whether it can be an effective exercise during rehabilitation. First, however, we ought to consider the alternative to “cross training” during time off due to injury—complete rest.

Dr. Jack Daniels, one of the pioneers of the use of threshold training, quantified the drop in fitness that occurs due to time away from running in his best-selling book, Daniels’ Running Formula. Daniels’ work exposes a few important points: first, there is virtually no drop in fitness as a result of missing up to five days of running. After that, your conditioning drops more sharply, then “bottoms off” after about ten weeks (representing your “baseline” fitness as a sedentary individual). After about a week or two away from running, the differences between those who cross-train (by any means) and those who take complete rest begin to emerge. Though the gap is only about two percent after fourteen days, this increases to ten percent (80% of initial fitness vs. 90% of initial fitness) after ten weeks or more. This means that a 4:30 miler who takes 10 weeks completely off will (in theory) regress to 5:32 without cross-training, but only 4:57 with it. So, having realized the benefits of staying fit, we can move on to how to go about doing so.

Aqua jogging has become popular because, unlike cycling or using an elliptical machine, it is quite similar to overground running, at least in terms of the muscles used and your range of motion. A good deal of physiology research was done on aqua jogging in the early and mid-90s, as its popularity was rising. One of the earlier and more influential studies was done in 1991 by Nancy Butts, Mary Tucker, and Christine Greening at the University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse.1 Their work compared oxygen consumption and heart rate during a graded exercise test done while aqua jogging and while treadmill running.Standard Bathroom Shelf Height Although the runners were not able to achieve the same heart rates and oxygen consumption levels in the pool as they did on the treadmill, the researchers noted that the disparity was similar to that between running and cycling, which also elicits lower oxygen consumption and heart rates (when done by runners, at least). Silver Lab Puppies Personality

This paved the way for aqua jogging to be viewed as “on par” or even superior to other forms of cross training. In an early review of some of the literature on aqua jogging, Reilly, Dowzer and Cable in the UK found that, at low to moderate intensities (comparable to an easy run or marathon pace), deep-water running is actually more demanding on the cardiovascular system, probably due to the increased demands on the upper body, which is poorly trained in runners compared to the legs.2Buy Bathroom Vanity Toronto It’s only when the intensity approaches what you’d encounter in a 5k or 3k race (or shorter) that aqua jogging reaches its limits. Perhaps because of the hydrostatic pressure from being submerged in water, or simply because of unfamiliarity with the exercise, runners aren’t able to push their bodies as hard in the water versus on land. This indicates that aqua jogging is probably better suited for maintaining aerobic fitness versus race-specific anaerobic fitness.

Building off Reilly et al.’s work, Garry Killgore at Linfield College authored an extensive review of the literature on aqua jogging in February of this year.3 In it, he highlighted the strengths of aqua jogging (namely, how closely it simulates actual running) and made some recommendations on how to take advantage of these. In general, though, Killgore’s review stresses that aqua jogging is more suited towards maintaining fitness, not building it. Though a few studies have found fitness gains in subjects who undergo an aqua jogging regimen, these tend to use sedentary people instead of athletes. On the bright side, however, runners can expect to maintain their fitness for at least six weeks by using an aqua jogging routine when injured. The only caveat is that the aqua jogging should be done at the same intensity, duration, and frequency as your normal training. So, if your training schedule called for a 90-minute long run, it can be a dull hour and a half in the pool!

Finally, he notes that your perceived effort while aqua jogging (how “hard” a particular effort feels relative to its actual physiological demands) is slightly increased in the pool. So, to get the same training effect, you’ll have to bump up the intensity a notch over what you’d use when running on land. While there’s little news that can cheer up a runner who’s been sentenced to four or six weeks off, the research we’ve reviewed in this article shows that not all is lost.A growing number of people are overweight today and many are considered obese. One of the main concerns with obesity is that it increases the risk for the development of other diseases. Cardiovascular disease, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, sleep apnea, hernias, respiratory problems, and other diseases are all more likely to occur in a person that is obese rather than someone at a healthy weight. In addition, heel pain that is common from plantar fasciitis is also a problem among obesity sufferers.

One study reported that an alarming 90 percent of individuals with heel pain are overweight. Unfortunately, the majority of these individuals neglect physical activity. Often, they blame heel pain as one of the main reasons for their lack of exercise. Given this situation, losing weight becomes almost impossible. Also, fixing the heel pain can be difficult as well.One of the main problems among obesity sufferers is the fact that the typical remedies for heel pain are not as effective for them. For example, an athlete could stay off their feet for a day or two and notice a major difference. This is not the case with an obese person. Simply walking around the grocery store can put excessive stress on their plantar fascia. A person that is healthy would not experience this stress. The fat pad on their foot would absorb the shock when they were walking. Unfortunately, the weight of an obese person is too much stress for the fat pad of the foot to bear. Because of this, the plantar fascia is easily injured and often inflamed.