Pool workout: water walking, water aerobics moves and intervals, no laps needed

A pool workout doesn't have to mean laps. Stand in chest-deep water and walk, jog, kick and push, and the water pushes back on every move. That makes the pool a training floor for people who don't want to swim laps, or who want a session that isn't a swim set. The swim sets themselves are on a swimming workout.

This page gives a session, labelled practical, what lab studies measured for water walking and water aerobics moves, what heart rate does in the water, and what trials of pool training found. Most of those trials were in older adults, and mostly women, so the populations are stated each time. It's a training page, not a health page: it makes no claim about weight, pain or any condition. Before any of it, water competency comes first: the American Red Cross describes it as being able to enter the water, get a breath, stay afloat, change position, swim a distance, then get out of the water safely.¹ Everything below happens in water you can stand in.

A pool workout without swimming

Practical, not a protocol from a trial. Work in water about chest deep. Warm up with five minutes of water walking, easy, then a little faster. Then the circuit: each move for 30 seconds hard and 30 seconds easy (walking in place), 2 rounds, with 2 minutes of easy walking between rounds. The harder you push the water, the harder it pushes back, so speed is how you turn it up.

Finish (practical): five minutes of easy water walking. For a pool interval workout, swap the circuit for 8 rounds of 30 seconds of fast water jogging and 60 seconds of walking. If you want to run where your feet don't touch the bottom, that's deep-water running, with its own studies: aqua jogging.

Water walking and jogging: what the lab measured

Water walking is harder than it looks at the same speed. In 12 healthy female college students walking in waist-deep water and on a treadmill at the same speeds (about 2.6 to 3.3 km/h), heart rate was significantly higher in the water at every speed, and it climbed with speed in the water while the treadmill rise wasn't significant.² In 8 healthy young adults walking at 2, 3 and 4 km/h on a treadmill in water and on land, oxygen uptake was similar but heart rate, as a share of reserve, was higher in the water; the authors say that matters if you set water intensity by heart rate.³

Practice changes the numbers too. In two groups of healthy women in their fifties walking in chest-deep water on a treadmill in a water flume, the women who didn't regularly exercise in water used more oxygen and had higher heart rates at every speed than the women who did, though the two groups' predicted maximal oxygen uptake didn't differ.⁴ The authors read it as experience in the water changing the response, even at the same fitness; a reading, not a trial of beginners over time.

The Compendium of Physical Activities rates activities in METs, a measure of energy cost; one MET is about 1.0 kcal per kilogram of body weight per hour.⁵ Its water rows:⁶

Water aerobics exercises: which moves work harder

Bigger moves cost more. In 12 active women, average age 24, tested to their maximum on six water aerobics moves, peak oxygen uptake was significantly lower for the abductor hop and jumping jacks than for the frontal kick and cross-country skiing, and peak heart rate was lower for jumping jacks than for stationary running and cross-country skiing. The authors tie the responses to the muscle mass involved in each move.⁷ That's why the circuit above leans on the kick, the ski and the jog.

Equipment and speed turn it up. In 15 women jogging in place while bending and straightening the elbows in the water, heart rate and oxygen uptake were significantly higher with water-drag or floating equipment than with none, and higher at the faster cadence.⁸ And a whole class counts as cardio in the measured sense: in 14 men and women averaging 57 years old, a 50-minute water aerobics session averaged 43.4% of heart rate reserve and 4.26 METs, which the authors judged to meet the American College of Sports Medicine's guidelines for improving and maintaining cardiorespiratory fitness.⁹

Heart rate in the pool: go by effort

In the two water-walking studies above that compared water with land, heart rate ran higher in the water at the same speed.^2,3 Running in deep water, with no floor, goes the other way, with lower heart rates (that's on aqua jogging). Either way, a heart-rate number from a land run doesn't carry straight over. Practical: go by effort. Easy is a pace where you could talk in full sentences; hard is a few words at a time. The talk-test version is on zone 2 cardio.

What pool training trials found

• Older women, 12 weeks. In a randomised trial, 15 women aged 60 to 75 did a supervised water exercise program three days a week, 70 minutes a day: warm-up and stretching, resistance exercise, walking and dancing in the water, then a cool-down. Their peak oxygen uptake rose 12%; strength on a hydraulic machine rose, for example 8% for knee extension and 13% for knee flexion; vertical jump rose 9% and side-stepping agility 22%. The 15 controls didn't change significantly.¹⁰
• Older adults, a review. A 2016 meta-analysis of 24 randomised trials, 1,456 healthy older people (89% women, average age 66.4), found a moderate positive effect of water exercise on physical functioning against control groups and a small positive effect against land exercise. The authors warn that the trials' high risk of bias may overstate the benefit against land, and conclude it is at least as effective as land exercise.¹¹
• Resistance in the water, adults 60 to 70. In a 16-week randomised trial of 80 volunteers, with three groups training twice a week and a control group, the two groups that did aquatic resistance training improved the chair-stand test significantly more than the control group (20.1% for resistance alone).¹²
• A real-life class, twice a week. Not every trial found a difference. In 15 adults and older adults doing 45 minutes of water aerobics twice a week for 12 weeks, against 8 controls, there were no differences between the groups after adjusting for age and starting values; within the exercise group, upper-body explosive strength rose, and the authors conclude the program was insufficient to change cardiorespiratory fitness.¹³

Read together: in older adults, pool training improved fitness tests against doing nothing in most of these trials, and the review puts it at least level with land exercise, with a warning that the trials may overstate it. These are mostly older women, so it's a pointer for anyone else, not a measurement of you.

Pool training in South Florida

Diogo Camera is an online fitness coach based in South Florida, where NOAA's 1991–2020 normals put the Miami International Airport station at 91.4 days a year at or above 90 F.¹⁴ On those days, a pool session is one practical way to keep cardio in the week when a midday run is off the table. The deck is still in the sun, so the hours advice on working out in the heat still applies: early or late beats midday. Coaching is online, wherever your pool is: online coaching in Florida.

How a pool day fits a week

The World Health Organization asks adults for at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week, and muscle-strengthening activities that involve all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.¹⁵ Practical: count a pool session as cardio, and keep two strength days on land.

When two rounds get easy, add a third, then make the moves faster before you make the session longer. The no-jump land version of the same idea is a low impact workout.

Common questions

What is a good pool workout for beginners?

Water walking and the circuit above, in water you can stand in, about 30 minutes. It's practical, not from a trial. In one study, women who didn't regularly exercise in water had higher heart rates walking in it than women who did, so expect it to feel harder at first (practical).⁴

Is water aerobics a good workout?

In one measured class, 50 minutes of water aerobics averaged 43.4% of heart rate reserve in adults averaging 57, which the authors judged to meet the American College of Sports Medicine's guidelines for cardiorespiratory fitness.⁹ In a 12-week trial of a twice-a-week class, though, cardiorespiratory fitness didn't change.¹³ Practical: how hard you work in the class decides most of it.

What are good swimming pool exercises for seniors?

The trials in older adults used water walking and dancing, resistance exercise in the water and water aerobics classes, and most improved fitness tests against control groups; one twice-a-week class didn't.^10,12,11,13 For adults 65 and over, the WHO guideline and a first week on land are on workouts for seniors.

Are there swimming pool exercises for the core?

The edge flutter kicks above (practical), and running in deep water: in 11 healthy adults, a deep abdominal muscle was more active running in deep water than standing in water, and more with high knees.¹⁶ The technique is on aqua jogging. For core work on land, see the plank.

Are pool workouts good for athletes?

The athlete studies are mostly deep-water running in trained runners, which is on aqua jogging. The trials on this page were in older adults.

How many calories does a water aerobics class use?

One study measured it. In Nikolai 2009, 14 men and women averaging 57 years old each did one 50-minute water aerobics session while a portable calorimetric system collected the data; total net energy expenditure averaged 249.1 kcal for the session, give or take 94.5.⁹ That's a measurement of one group in one session, not a figure for you, and this page makes no weight claim.

I'm a fitness coach, not a doctor: if you have pain, an injury or a health condition, ask a doctor or physical therapist before you start training in the water.

If you'd rather have the week planned

A pool day is easy to plan and easy to drop when the week gets busy. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days and places you actually train, pool included, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching explains how it works, and apply is the first step. Otherwise: do the pool circuit once this week, two rounds.