Benefits of Aquatic Based Stability/Balance Training

BENEFITS OF AQUATIC BASED STABILITY/BALANCE TRAINING

Everything we do in life takes balance, from sitting in a chair to walking in the park to complex movements like mountain biking or skiing. We often take these things for granted, yet functional balance is fundamental to our wellbeing, strength, cardiovascular fitness and flexibility. Aquatic Based Stability/Balance Training (ABST) is a new way to train your body to not only improve your athletic ability, but also improve all aspects of your physical wellness.  Glide is the leader of this new fitness movement and our CardioWave program is designed to maximize the benefits of ABST in fun and challenging classes that are geared to everyone from those starting from a sedentary lifestyle to elite athletes.

SOME OF THE BENEFITS OF ABST

1. A low impact, high intensity workout – ABST workouts are great for people looking to get a workout that is gentle on the body, yet still high intensity. After just a few weeks you will notice your strength, endurance, and overall fitness increase.
2. Coordination – ABST workouts promote improved coordination and reflex responses. This will help your body to react to sudden changes in direction, improve agility and reduce the risk of accidental falls. Coordination should be an automatic reflexive response; with ABST training you can improve your coordination and lower your reaction time.
3. Strength – Balance/Stability training is challenging for your central nervous system. Using ABST to ignite your central nervous system (CNS) is the key to maximizing your performance in the weight room. ABST will force your CNS to recruit and engage more muscles fibers compared to doing the same exercise off the water. This will train your body to move with maximal velocity and force. This effect is known as post activation potentiation (PAP), which is the increase in muscle force and rate of force development as a result of the previous activation of the muscle.
4. Body Awareness – Body awareness is the sense of how your own limbs are oriented and moving in space (also referred to as proprioception). Balance training promotes increased body awareness, which makes movement more seamless, with less likelihood of injury.
5. Joint Stability – ABST training promotes stable ankles, knees, hips, spine, shoulders, and arms. Strengthening these joints will help to prevent numerous injuries such as rolled ankles or knee problems. You can also find benefit from increased range of motion in your joints.
6. Reaction Time – If you slip or stumble when carrying out challenging balance exercises your body needs to stabilize itself immediately or you will fall. ABST can improve your reaction time as you learn to quickly correct a mistake, but not over-correct.
7. Fun & Challenge –Incorporating ABST into your fitness routine adds a challenging and fun dimension to daily exercise. It is incredibly motivating when you notice improvements in the rest of your fitness regime as a result of adding in balance training.
8. Long term health – Incorporating ABST into your routine helps to maintain and improve balance, which is needed to prevent falls and fractures. Good balance is extremely important as we grow older; it’s a skill that everyone will benefit from, young or old. One of the best parts of ABST training is that it is never too late to start – all ages will see benefits from adding ABST into their routine.
9. Weight loss – ABST dramatically increases weight loss over standard exercises. When you are training on an unstable platform your body will be forced to engage many more muscles than when doing the same exercises on land. ABST not only strengthens your core and large muscle groups, it also engages the muscles used to stabilize your body. When these muscles are challenged, they will begin to create new muscle mass, which will increase your metabolism and you will have long-lasting, meaningful weight loss.