August 3, 2020 blog
Swimming and relaxing are the most common associated words with Water, but do you know that water can be used in rehabilitation and strengthening as well?
Today we would like to share how Aquatic Therapy and Swimming differentiate.
Although both adds fun in water along with building endurance and strength but act very differently on our body, here are few differences:
| Swimming | Aquatic Therapy |
|---|---|
| “Swimming, in recreation and sports, the propulsion of the body through water by combined arm and leg motions and the natural flotation of the body.” Encyclopaedia Britannica | “Aquatic therapy, refers to treatments and exercises performed in water for relaxation, fitness, physical rehabilitation, and other therapeutic benefit. Typically a qualified aquatic therapist gives constant attendance to a person receiving treatment in a heated therapy pool.” – Wikipedia. |
| It involves overall body workout | Depending on the goal of the individual, it can be total body or individual muscle workout |
| Not specific to group of muscle | Specific to group of muscle, thus helps in isolated strengthening |
| Coordination between breath control and body control required. Thus difficult to learn for people who cannot coordinate | Breath control is one of the step to adapt to water and thus helps in relaxing |
| Helps in lengthening of muscle once you can floating | It helps in lengthening of muscles irrespective of floating |
| Helps in toning of muscles majorly in upper body | Depending on goal toning of muscles can be achieved |
| Helps in burning calories; however if you have an optimal streamlined posture during swimming and you are fat you will stay float and not burn as much as expected. Thus a plateau is reached and hardly you burn calories unless interval training is carried out | Calories is burned in functional workout and depending on the baseline capacity ,strengthening is done in much graded manner |
| Difficult to achieve floating position if body is dense | Denser body can be used as means of strengthening oneself |
| For people who have fear of water or drowning cannot opt | Does not require head immersion or remaining afloat in beginning of the technique |
| Does not consider functional position | Always considers functional position |
| No influence of gravity-Gravity minimized | Considers gravitational influence based on the depth and parts of the body immersed. Thus it becomes easy to transfer the effects on land which has constant gravitational influence |
At PhysioAqua we believe in the philosophy of “Heal With Water”, we provide best in class Aquatic Therapy experience. We treat various conditions like Autism, Cerebal Palsy, Downs Syndrome, Post Operative Rehabilitation and many more.
For appointments call at : +91 9172 777 456
Happy Healing!!