The Benefits of Swimming for Your Health

Mind, Body and Soul

ipool-views-300x137Swimming works your whole entire body, improving cardiovascular conditioning, muscle strength, endurance, posture, and flexibility all at the same time. Your cardiovascular system in particular benefits because swimming improves your body’s use of oxygen without overworking your heart. As you become fitter and are able to swim longer, your resting heart rate and respiratory rate will be reduced, making blood flow to the heart and lungs more efficient. On average, a swimmer can burn as many calories in an hour as a runner who runs six miles in one hour. Simply put, some call swimming the perfect form of exercise.

There are many other benefits of swimming such as whole body conditioning, low risk of injury, lowimpact exercise, improve blood pressure, and stress reduction.

Swimming tones your upper and lower body because you are using almost all of your major muscle groups. Swimming causes no stress on your bones, joints or connective tissue due to buoyancy and the fact that you weight 1/10thless in water.

Also pregnant women prefer swimming because it helps strengthen the shoulder and abdominal muscles, which can be strained when carrying a baby. For the elderly, swimming helps relax stiff muscles and isn’t weight bearing. Women who have had mastectomy and those recovering from an injury often turn to swimming or water aerobic exercises because it’s low impact.

Swimming is extremely relaxing because it allows more oxygen to flow to your muscles and forces you to regulate your breathing.


Gallery22-300x200The Benefits of Aquatic iPool Therapy

► Aquatic therapy or pool therapy consists of an exercise program that is performed in the water. It is a beneficial form of therapy that is useful for a variety of medical conditions. Aquatic therapy uses the physical properties of water to assist in patient healing and exercise performance.

► One benefit of aquatic therapy is the buoyancy provided by the water. While submerged in water, buoyancy assists in supporting the weight of the patient. This decreases the amount of weight bearing which reduces the force of stress placed on the joints. This aspect of aquatic therapy is especially useful for patients with arthritis, healing fractured bones, or who are overweight. By decreasing the amount of joint stress it is easier and less painful to perform exercises.

► The viscosity of water provides an excellent source of resistance that can be easily incorporated into an aquatic therapy exercise program.

► This resistance allows for muscle strengthening without the need of weights. Using resistance coupled with the water’s buoyancy allows a person to strengthen muscle groups with decreased joint stress that cannot be experienced on land.

► Aquatic therapy also utilizes hydrostatic pressure to decrease swelling and improve joint position awareness. The hydrostatic pressure produces forces perpendicular to the body’s surface. This pressure provides joint positional awareness to the patient. As a result, patient proprioception is improved. This is important for patients who have experienced joint sprains, as when ligaments are torn, our proprioception becomes decreased. The hydrostatic pressure also assists in decreasing joint and soft tissue swelling that results after injury or with arthritic disorders.

► Lastly, the warmth of the water experience during aquatic therapy assists in relaxing muscles and vasodilates vessels, increasing blood flow to injured areas. Patients with muscle spasms, back pain, and fibromyalgia find this aspect of aquatic therapy especially therapeutic.

► It is important to know however, that aquatic therapy is not for everyone. People with cardiac disease should not participate in aquatic therapy. Those who have fevers, infections, or bowel/bladder incontinence are also not candidates for aquatic therapy. Always discuss this with your physician before beginning an aquatic therapy program.

walker

 

umbrella-300x169 We are working on some new products such as the Solar Blanket and the iPool umbrella. We have successfully designed and manufactured an umbrella that will keep the sun off of you and the iPool while you are swimming in place. The umbrella will attach to the four corners of the iPool and be held in place like the rain covers you find on tents. Fiberglass poles are used to keep the shape of the umbrella and then will be attached to the iPool. Here is a picture of the new umbrella we will be offering late April or early May of this year. This is one of our first prototypes that we use in China for fitting new products.

The last item we are working on is a solar blanket. We are trying to find a manufacturer who can cut us a deal on a blanket for the exact size of solarblanketthe iPool. The solar cover is called a blue/silver which aids in keeping the intense sunrays out and letting the good rays in. It should also help keep down algae growth and use fewer chemicals to balance the water. This type solar blanket will also be effective in keeping down your heating bills each month. With the solar blanket on the iPool, your cycle time will be cut down to a minimum of 10 to 20 minutes a day to keep your iPool warm and ready for you to use it when you are.