Monday, January 7, 2013

Aqua-jogging

I tried this (Ted style) last week. My assessment:

Wow, what a workout.

This is very different from water running, where I push off of the ground. The two seem to serve very different purposes. Water running is a slow-motion strength-builder and form-developer. Aqua-jogging is a high heart-rate endeavor. Like Ted suggested, staying afloat is half of the battle.

I have a knee tendon that is making hill repeats infeasible. That's a problem, because this is hill repeat time of year. But 50 meters of aqua-jogging is much like 90 seconds of hill climbing, without the stress on the tendons.

There is a skill to finding the right pitch for your body in the water. Too upright and you sink like a stone. Too far forward and you are basically swimming. 15 degrees or so from vertical and you can make slow progress without sinking, or at least without sinking quickly.

8 times down the 50 meter pool pretty much knocked me over.

Wow, what a workout.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, that was pretty much my experience, though I didn't make it half way across the 25 yard pool . . . I had newfound respect for the track team. They seemed to have found a way to keep going, aerobically for a good long time.

    There's a third approach, Most people are not as hard core as the two of us. They wear a floatation belt. This eliminates the sinking/drowning problem.

    I don't currently have access to a deep enough pool, but I would like to lean more about water running.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yep that was what I was doing when I mentioned my efforts in a previous post: I bought a belt and would do an hour of warmups, intervals and cool down, all slightly leaning forward, but held up by the belt...awesome. Haven't tried it again in three years, maybe I should...but my legs are shot this week from rowing at Dorney!

    ReplyDelete