Sports

Break Through Barriers

Athletes of all skill levels are always looking for innovative ways to remain healthy and succeed in training and competition. Incorporating HydroWorx for therapy and fitness can help athletes recover from an injury, reduce stress on joints and continue their journey toward actively participating in their sport again.

Benefits of Aquatic Therapy for Athletes and Sports Injury Rehabilitation

One of the main benefits of aquatic therapy is that it is an effective sports-related injury recovery and rehab method. Water-based exercises allow someone recovering from an injury to safely and comfortably exercise. Suppose an athlete cannot exercise or participate in rehabilitation on land. In that case, aquatic water therapy can provide a non-weight-bearing environment for a patient to exercise safely in without adding strain on a healing injury. HydroWorx aquatic therapy for athletes offers many benefits, including the ability to:

• Maintain cardiovascular fitness: Respiratory muscles work harder during a water-based exercise, helping to strengthen these muscles throughout the session and afterward.
• Intensify workouts safely: HydroWorx therapy can safely and productively intensify an exercise for those who are progressing well through rehab and looking for an extra push during recovery.
• Ease therapy into active training: Aquatic therapy can be a useful tool for an injured athlete to help bridge therapy to training.

Preventative Benefits of Aquatic Therapy

In addition to being a useful form of rehabilitation, there are many preventative benefits of aquatic therapy. Water-based workouts offer a rewarding exercise with hydrostatic pressure, strengthening the lungs and heart. The natural pressure of water can also be a useful compression tool to alleviate chronic aches, pains or stiffness.

The pressure an aquatic wellness pool offers can help improve circulation, sending oxygen-rich blood throughout the body. These fitness pools can help strengthen lean muscle mass, reduce overuse injuries and improve circulation to minimize the risk of future injuries. Aquatic wellness pools provide unique preventative benefits and advantages:

• Muscle strengthening: Water’s natural resistance can strengthen patients’ muscles and improve overall balance, reducing the risk of strain and injury later on.
• Joint improvement: With a higher range of motion and reduction in gravity, aquatic therapy can promote improved joint flexibility, again helping prevent injuries in the future.
• Pain management: Improved circulation and increased blood supply to the muscles can reduce pain and help expedite the healing process, lowering the risk of aggravating a sports-related injury.

Active Recovery and Performance Training

Take conditioning and cardio training workouts to a whole new low impact level. Your athletes won’t believe the workout they can achieve! Here’s how a HydroWorx underwater treadmill can enhance performance training:
 

• Interval training: Encourage intense interval sessions or Tabata training against the resistance jets and on the high-speed underwater treadmill — up to 9 mph — for performance and VO2 Max training.
• Power training: Have athletes perform high explosive power training in the water with less impact on their joints.
• Active recovery: Promote active recovery by utilizing HydroWorx cold and warm plunge technology in our exercise plunge pools to reduce muscle soreness post-workout.
• Deep tissue regeneration: Ease aching muscles and promote regeneration with our deep tissue massage attachments.

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Train Hard. Stay Healthy. Achieve Results

Many professional and collegiate championship teams believe in the benefits of HydroWorx to ensure the health and proper conditioning of their athletes. The science behind HydroWorx training reinforces the results they can achieve:

• Mimics muscular function: Tests focused on muscular function while running on a HydroWorx underwater treadmill proved to closely mimic the muscular function employed while running on land.
• Promotes proper workout intensity: A metabolic and cardiovascular environment as stressful as a traditional land-based treadmill can be achieved with the HydroWorx underwater treadmill and resistance jets but with reduced joint stress.
• Increases lean body mass: A 12-week study on 47 men and women found that lean body mass, primarily in the legs, increased during underwater treadmill exercise over land-based running.

Contact Us

Ready to offer your sports-injury patients the benefits of HydroWorx? Contact us today — our design services team is ready to answer your questions about our sports injury equipment.

The strategic use of HydroWorx has in some cases helped us rewrite exercise progressions for athletes returning from injuries. The old standard protocol of return to sport on certain injuries and certain surgeries, we have to take a fresh look at that now because we can utilize the HydroWorx in ways that 10 years ago we didn’t even think about doing.

Michael Johnson Performance
Lance Walker, CSCS, PT, Director of Performance

Proud to be recognized as a Gold award winner in Injury Treatment as part of Training & Conditioning’s 2017 Excellence in Innovation award!