Achieving Weight Loss

If you’re like so many Americans, maintaining and achieving weight-loss goals is a constant struggle. Whether you’re suffering from a health related condition or considered at-risk, a sedentary lifestyle is often associated with, or can lead to, a decreased quality of life.

Proper weight management with physical exercise and diet is easier said than done, but we have hope for you, and a treatment solution.

If you’re struggling with your weight, there’s promising research that shows exercising and walking in warm water can offer considerable benefits. Water exercise can help reduce fatigue and pressure on joints, soothe aches, help with balance, and improve your function, mobility, and flexibility, allowing you to experience an overall better quality of life and well-being. If your weight-loss issues stem from pain or injury, then consider the success found with water exercise programs.

We understand that pain, frustration, and a risk of injuries may be keeping you from exploring exercise options. That’s one of the reasons Master Spas has developed H2X Swim Spas. This aquatic exercise tool will help you improve strength and relieve pain to achieve your weight-loss goals and better your physical condition. This is something you can now do from the privacy and convenience of your home.

Providing Hope

When you avoid activities and succumb to a sedentary lifestyle, you limit the use of your joints and muscles which can increase pain, and sometimes lead to depression and increased weight issues. Over time, your muscles can weaken and the joints and muscles can lose flexibility (or range of motion). Inactivity also can shorten and tighten muscles, causing you to feel more pain and stiffness – not only keeping you from exercising, but also from every day activities, which in turn makes maintaining and controlling weight more difficult.

With regular exercise, you keep joints moving, reduce joint pain, restore and preserve strength and flexibility, and protect joints against further damage. Exercise can also: improve your coordination and endurance; improve your ability to perform daily tasks like walk and climb stairs; increase energy; reduce fatigue; improve sleep; and lead to an improved sense of self-esteem and accomplishment.

If you have found different land-based exercise programs unsuccessful for your weight loss or management, consider exploring the benefits of water exercise (also known as aquatic therapy or hydrotherapy).

Anyone, no matter the age, weight, or fitness level, can participate and benefit from water exercise. In fact, because water provides a natural form of resistance for your body, almost any movement you perform in the water burns calories.

According to MayoClinic.com, the more you weigh, the more calories you’ll burn doing water exercise. For example, a 240 pound person burns about 600 calories per hour doing water aerobics, while a 200 pound person burns about 500 calories performing water aerobic exercise for the same duration.

Land vs. Water

Exercising and training in water provides an ideal, forgiving environment for losing weight. By using the natural resistance and buoyancy of water, you can increase muscle strength and range of motion in a safer environment, perform exercises without the impact forces from land-based treatments, and gradually increase to higher level training without adding stress to an injury. This is something land-based training cannot successfully offer.

Because of the accommodating resistance in water, the more you move, the harder the water pushes back. This forces your muscles to work harder, helping you burn fat and tone muscles quicker than land-based exercise programs.

Buoyancy counteracts gravity, thereby decreasing the weight placed on painful joints and the spine. In fact, when immersed to neck level, buoyancy supports 90 percent of the body’s weight, and in waist-deep water, buoyancy can support 50 percent of your body weight. Diminished weight bearing stress is one of the many advantages of exercising in water, allowing you to strengthen weak muscles and improve balance and confidence.

Research studies that compared upper and lower body workouts performed on land versus in the water, showed that exercises performed in water created a higher energy output than on land. These studies also explained the benefits of water exercise where both the upper and lower body movements were combined in the water, utilizing full body movements thereby expending more energy and burning more calories.

A popular water exercise for weight-loss programs is aqua jogging, which simulates running in water and exerts full body motions. Unlike jogging on land, aqua jogging spares your joints of high impact, or the shock equivalent of three to six times your body weight that travels up your legs and into your spine every time your foot hits the pavement.

A 2010 study in the Journal of Obesity looked at the effects of aqua jogging in obese adults and concluded that subjects who performed jogging in the water had reduced their body fat and waist size, and improved their overall aerobic fitness and quality of life.

Exercising in warm water also raises your body temperature, causing blood vessels to dilate and increase circulation of blood in your body. This can ease joint pain and improve flexibility, as well as raise your heart rate to burn even more calories during your workout. In addition, the soothing temperature and buoyancy of warm water massages your body and helps relax tight muscles, also helping with general mental attitude and depression.

Dr. Rick McAvoy, PT, DPT, CSCS, professor of hydrotherapy, has specialized in aquatic physical therapy for over 25 years and develops water based exercise, therapy, fitness, and training programs, utilizing Master Spas Swim Spas as a tool in his practice.

"I witness every day in my physical therapy and training practice the extraordinary power that water provides,” said McAvoy. “In the water, I’ve seen patient’s lives dramatically changed, not only from pain relief, but also for significant weight loss."

The Solution

Master Spas is committed to helping you achieve your weight-loss goals, and improve your overall physical health and quality of life. We have designed specific aquatic exercise protocols to help you achieve your fitness goals. And, we’ve developed a swim spa with features to meet your specific needs, so you can utilize this therapy in the convenience and privacy of your own home, more often and year round, for better long-term outcomes.

Aquatic exercise offers hope to those who are struggling to maintain and lose weight, and we are striving to provide the best possible solutions, bringing together the best in the industry for you.

Getting it Done Together

Just like land-based exercise programs, people are turning to independent aquatic exercise and therapy and are looking for credible in-home exercise protocols. That’s where we come in.

Dr. McAvoy has developed exercise programs exclusively designed for Master Spas to help you get the most out of your swim spa and give you step-by-step activities with the H2Xercise book that will specifically help you reach your goals to a better quality of life. We include the H2Xercise book with each swim spa, along with the H2Xercise System which includes a rowing kit, resistance bands, dumbbells and ankle fins to maximize your exercise and fitness results (all free upon warranty registration).