Cardio respiratory endurance is defined as the ability to engage large muscle groups, dynamically or rhythmically, continuously or intermittently, at low through moderate to high intensity exercise.
Strengthening or stretching muscles with specific joint action is more challenging to teach properly and effectively since the specific joint action must be utilized to engage the muscle.
Tips for developing a Great Group Exercise Water program
There are really infinite ways to put a good program together and here are some key tips:
- Keep everyone moving. This is an exercise class so either talking at them or letting participants talk – may decrease benefits. Everyone should be able to talk and move (especially the instructor offering instruction). The instructor should get the basic movement going and then add some challenge (progression) or modification (less intensity) depending on who attends the program and their exercise goals.
- Get the legs moving to warm up the large leg muscles – Train sculling for balance and add arm movements to support posture . Demonstrate sculling to show how to use the water to help movement (assistance) or to make the movement harder (resistance). Then add travel with the movement (assistive travel or resistive travel). There are many ways to travel and move as a team or partners or patterns so offer variety and move in each movement plane (front to back, side to side and diagonal, partners, circles, criss-cross, combinations of movements).
- Always allow enough time to warm up and prepare for the workout. We suggest at least 2 songs if the class is using music. Most people need time to adjust to the exercise class especially coming from gravity to buoyancy. Introduce all the basic moves with working positions (shallow) and Body positions (deep) . Assume that there may be swimmers and non swimmers so teach balance, posture and personal safety skills. The warm us should be performed at a lower intensity than the intended workout to prepare the joints, muscles, heart and mind for the exercise to come. Also show different basic movements and working positions (low impact versus only high intensity or high impact) especially to the newcomers.
- Utilize more upbeat songs for cardiovascular training and try and intersperse 2-5 sets of 3-5 minutes of cardio moves (continuous lower body rhythmical movements) if you have an hour program. You need to use the lower body muscles to pump blood to the heart which carries oxygen. A healthy heart and moving helps people to feel good as well. Training intervals of go more intense versus go easy will help the heart to recover from intense exercise which is of huge benefit to the recovery heart rate. The faster you may recover from intense exercise – the healthier the heart is.
- Offer muscular conditioning segments to help with muscular strength, endurance and flexibility. Be sure to offer enough repetitions of the exercise (at least 8-25 reps) and enough sets of the exercise or perform at least three exercises of the same muscle group. Performing 3-5 sets of approximately 8-25 repetitions will ultimately fatigue the muscles which will help to rebuild and make the muscles “stronger” which is the goal of muscular strength. In between muscles sets you may need to offer 15-30 seconds of active recovery especially if you have a lot of different levels of strength in your classes however, if they group is stronger you may want to super set the muscle exercises – have them starting stationary, then add more challenging exercise or movement , then travel the movement ( resist or assist travel).
- Offering intervals of CV versus muscle sets or segments will help with recovery heart rate and most importantly provide the participants with a total body program.
- Add fun exercises throughout a program – so people keep moving and want to keep coming back to the program. Have participants choose their favourite exercise or song or equipment for variety.
- Allow everyone to move at their personal best level of intensity or speed. Realize that always going just fast will not train balance and posture. Balance training is key for fall prevention on land.
- Assume that one size does not fit all – show multilevel programming to accommodate all skills and levels of intensity. Start with easiest exercise and add some options to make the exercise more challenging or more intense.
- Check in throughout the program and see how everyone is feeling in terms of energy and intensity. If you need to add intensity or modify an exercise be ready with some ideas or tips to offer each person move at their personal best.
