Aquatic Functional Fitness for Seniors

Pool training is an ideal environment to train people with mobility challenges such as those with joint replacements, injuries or chronic conditions like arthritis. It’s also becoming increasingly popular as a training medium for people preparing for (pre-rehabilitation) or recovering from surgery. Since functional fitness is relevant to all of these special populations, this article begins with a focus on function.

Functional fitness is generally considered to be a person's ability to perform light, moderate and strenuous recreational, household, daily living and personal care tasks. These functional activities vary widely depending upon a person's health, lifestyle, activity level and occupation. Functional activities can be as basic as walking, moving in and out of chairs, lifting, carrying, cleaning, cooking, dressing, yard work, housework or shopping. Higher level activities incorporate high demand occupational tasks, recreational or athletic activities, such as playing golf or tennis or hiking.

A lack of strength and endurance to perform daily activities is a common problem among mature adults. This loss of function limits physical independence and can decline to the point where physical capabilities are almost completely diminished. Aqua instructors are in the perfect position to arrest this decline by focusing on improving functional abilities when developing aquatic classes for mature adults. Participants of this age level are more motivated by goals such as eliminating back pain and increasing energy, rather than improving athletic performance or toning muscles. Market and teach your classes accordingly.

The goal of functional exercise is to enhance a person's ability to perform a desired movement more efficiently or safely. When designing a functional exercise, first identify the activity that needs improvement and then break that activity down into components. Training is specific to the action, so improving your capacity to vacuum a rug, for example, requires exercises that incorporate walking and multi-directional lunges, balance and pushing and pulling against resistance.

Fall Prevention

The following two functional exercises focus on fall prevention. Falls in older adults generally result from a loss of muscular conditioning and balance, so it is important to strengthen the trunk stabilizers and muscles in the hips and legs. The following two exercises were developed by aqua specialist Mary Sanders and physiotherapist Cathy Maloney-Hills during a study conducted at the Sanford Center on Aging at the University of Nevada.

Exercise 1: Freeze Frame

• Objectives: Balance, trunk stabilization and walking
• Action: Participants walk in shallow water. Cue them to stop. Participants freeze their position and hold. Water currents challenge balance, so participants must use stabilizers to hold their position.
• Progression: Participants hold hands out of water. Cue them to stop and freeze on their non-dominant leg. Freeze with arms at a diagonal or moving.

Exercise 2: Leash Me

• Objectives: Balance, stride length, endurance
• Action: Work in pairs and use a five foot fit strip. One person (the walker) stands in front of the other (the tugger). The tugger leashes the walker with the strip around the waist, then jogs side-to-side behind the walker and tugs on ends of the leash while the walker tries to travel forward. Cue participants to look ahead, and use a smooth, strong and steady stride, with good posture. Tuggers need to use brief intermittent tugs and allow walkers to walk! Leashes challenge stabilizers. Travelling vigorously back and forth across the pool improves endurance.
• Progression: Start in chest deep water and increase stride length. Move to shallower water to increase difficulty. Walkers can hold hands out of water and tuggers can increase frequency of tugs.
• Variations: Walkers can travel sideways or backwards.

Reaching and Opening

The following two exercises improve rotator cuff strength and endurance and enhance shoulder stabilization. This is important to help prevent injuries in activities such as reaching and picking things up and opening cabinets or sliding doors.

Exercise 1: External Rotators

• Action: Hold arms against torso with elbows bent 90 degrees and palms in. Cue to bring shoulders down and back and engage abdominals. Keep elbows against torso and emphasize opening hands out. Return by slicing hands back in to the torso.
• Progression: Use open web hands or water mitts. Alternatively, gently hold a resistive strip in each hand across front of body or gently hold a paddle in each hand. Increase speed, travel forwards while performing movement. Travel backwards while performing movement.
• Variation: To challenge stabilizers, use one arm only or use both arms and stand on one leg.

Exercise 2: Internal Rotators

• Action: Same starting position as above except that arms angle slightly outward instead of being held directly in front of body. Keep elbows against torso and emphasise pushing hands together, return by slicing hands out.
• Progression: Use open web hands or water mitts. Gently hold a resistive strip in each hand with strip behind body, or gently hold a paddle in each hand. Increase speed; travel backwards while performing movement; travel forwards while performing movement.
• Variation: To challenge stabilizers, use one arm only or use both arms and stand on one leg.

Muscular Strength

Research studies show that muscular strength is very important to physical functioning. This holds true not only for older adults, but also for those in middle age. A study at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas suggests that maintenance of strength throughout the lifespan may reduce the prevalence of functional limitations. Muscle conditioning of major muscle groups should therefore be an important component of your aquatic exercise classes.

Strong muscles are not only important to facilitate activities of daily living, participants also need a certain level of strength before they can exercise effectively to improve cardiovascular fitness.

Visible Results

Another benefit of incorporating functional exercises into your aquatic classes is that your participants will experience noticeable improvements in their daily lives. You can highlight these changes in proficiency by adding periodic functional tests for participants to measure personal achievements (i.e., answering the telephone or getting off of a bus). Roberta Rikli, PhD and Jessie Jones, PhD at California State University have developed a battery of functional fitness tests for older adults, including the following: Set up a cone or marker eight feet from the front legs of a securely anchored chair. The participant sits on the chair with hands on thighs and feet flat on the floor. Time how long it takes for the person to get up off their chair, walk quickly around the cone and sit back down. Stop timing when the participant sits and record the time to the nearest 1/10th of a second. Record the result and chart the improvement over time.

Not only is it motivating for participants to be able to measure their progress, it also validates the effectiveness of your instruction and can improve class retention. When you start to focus the content of your classes towards exercise for health and function, you broaden the appeal of your aqua program. When your aquatic classes serve the practical needs of participants, their motivation to participate will soar.