Get ready to roll out the No-Bounce Challenge in your classes. Joint Friendly High Low with Jackie Lebeau is a 50-minute aquatic fitness class designed entirely with grounded moves that are high on intensity and low on impact. If your class members choose to accept it, their challenge is to keep one or both feet on the pool floor at all times. They can’t jump and they can’t bounce.
Many of your class members choose to participate in your aquatic fitness classes because they have joint impact issues and can no longer safely enjoy other fitness activities. It is important to understand that there is still impact in shallow water exercise. When your class members are exercising in chest depth water, they are still bearing 25-35% of their body weight. Shallow water programming typically includes bounding one-footed moves (weight transfer) and two-footed jumping exercises. Bouncing and jumping in shallow water can cause discomfort, pain and possibly even injury to class members who already have issues with their hips, knees, ankles and feet.
Overlooked Technique
Grounding movement by keeping one or both feet anchored to the pool floor is an often-overlooked technique for eliminating impact from shallow water exercises. And lower impact does not have to mean lower intensity. Instructors can maintain intensity in grounded movement with vigorous movement of the arms and the non-grounded leg. In addition to being joint friendly, grounded moves present a stability challenge for your class members. Bouncing is a natural inclination in shallow water exercise and so the No-Bounce Challenge will bring about a new fitness experience for them.
Ideal for Shallower Waters
If you are teaching a class in shallower waters where the water does not come up to chest depth for most of the participants, grounded exercises are really the only option you have. Exercising at waist depth, a person is still bearing 50% of their body weight. Bouncing and jumping would not be recommended at this depth. In this case, you would want to design your routines entirely with anchored movement.
Easier to Teach on Deck
Aquatic fitness instructors who lead their classes from deck will especially benefit from adding more anchored movement into their classes. Grounded movement is much easier to teach from deck than bounded, jumping or suspend exercises.
Watch Jackie talk about Joint Friendly High Low and the No-Bounce Challenge and then read on for a summary of the class format.
Class-at-a-Glance
The Joint Friendly High Low class format includes a warm-up, cool down and five exercise segments. The first four exercise segments are each 8 minutes long and include grounded exercises taught with add-on instruction. The fifth exercise segment includes all the exercises from the first four segments coming together in an add-on sequence and serving as a fun finale. Equipment is not used in this class. The water’s resistance is plenty.
I hope this video helps you take away a better understanding of how to design your shallow water classes to be completely impact free, or at the very least encourages you to add more anchored movement in your classes. Grounding movement is just one impact reduction technique available to shallow water fitness instructors. Pool depth dictates which impact reduction technique is best. Grounded moves are not a good choice if the pool you teach in has a deeper shallow end. Consider utilizing grounded movement in shallower waters, or whenever you want to limit impact in your classes.
If you like this video and want to learn more about grounded movement, consider watching Ground Forces.
Fitmotivation extends a big thank you to Jackie Lebeau for returning once again to Florida to film videos. This is Jackie’s 10th year filming videos for Fitmotivation & Poolfit. Check out her other Fitmotivation Videos and stay tuned for more new videos from Jackie posting this winter.
