4 Pool Exercises for Stronger Legs

Get a leg up on your strength and balance with these exercise videos

Dip in a pool, take a few steps, and guess what? You're exercising! Water has natural resistance, making pools the ideal place for low-impact leg exercises with 360-degree resistance. Below, you'll find four brief videos, each with a pool exercise targeting your legs.

Shake a Leg

Leg workouts offer the same benefits as other exercises: they burn calories and are part of an active lifestyle linked to a healthier, longer life. Leg exercises in the pool help you develop stability and balance, so they're even more important as you age.

One study specifically looked at adults with Knee Osteoarthritis, which is the most common joint ailment among the elderly. After six weeks of pool workouts, they improved balance whether they exercised in the pool or on dry land. Notably, only the pool workout group minimized what's called "postural sway," or how steady they are when standing; sway is linked to an increased risk of falling, and the pool exercisers improved more in this area.

Leg exercises may also help alleviate lower back pain. That was the finding of an eight-week study. Compared to adults doing traditional lower-back exercises, those who did only leg exercises showed "superior effects" and reported less back pain, the researchers wrote.

The Leg Workout

Skips are what we did as kids! We didn't know that they developed the balance and leg muscles then. As a pool exercise, you can skip with water as 360-degree resistance on the pool floor or on Endless Pools' exclusive Underwater Treadmill.

The Lunge Run is another body-weight pool exercise for your lower body. The water helps greatly with the required balance. You're sure to feel these in your glutes!

Lateral Bounds and Squat Jumps are simple exercises that require only water and your body weight. Combined, they develop the legs more thoroughly, as the side-to-side lateral motion targets different muscles than up-and-down jumps.

What can you gain from the four simple moves in this leg workout? Dip in with these pool exercises, and you could be on your way to better health for a more active, independent life.

As a bonus, Alex has three more exercises for a stronger upper body.

Sources:

• "Effects of aquatic exercise and land-based exercise on postural sway in elderly with knee osteoarthritis." Asian Biomedicine Vol. 4 No. 5 October 2010; 739-745

• "The effect of 8 weeks deep-aquatic exercises on static balance and lower body strength among elderly men." International Journal of Applied Exercise Physiology 6(Vol 6 No 1 (2017): April)

• "Comparison of Lower Limb and Back Exercises for Runners with Chronic Low Back Pain." Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2017 Dec;49(12):2374-2384.