An Endless Pools swim spa is great for getting fit and staying that way.  Here are some handy tips, tricks and exercises to help you get the most out of your swim spa.

Warm Up Exercises

As with any form of exercise it’s a good idea to warm up with some gentle exercises before you move on to more strenuous techniques.  This will help to avoid pulled muscles or injury.

Stretching

It’s a good idea to stretch muscles and joints you’re planning to work on before and after an exercise session.  You don’t need the swim-spa’s water flow turned on for this bit.  Simply floating in the spa and stretching different muscles in turn will help get you warmed up and avoid injury later on.  The warmth and buoyancy of the water will help the muscles to relax.

Jogging

This is a good exercise for your legs. Simply jog in place in the swim spa.  The water will provide resistance and the buoyancy will reduce the impact on heels, ankles and knees.  Even better, with the Endless Pools underwater treadmill upgrade you can do proper jogging or running.

Bicycle

Hold on to the side of the swim spa and bring your feet up off the bottom, then begin a pedalling motion under the water.  Again the water provides both resistance and buoyancy.  Maintain this for a minute or two, and then reverse direction.

Swimming Strokes

Once you’re good and warmed up, you can get into the exercise session proper with some swimming.  It’s a good idea to try different swim strokes to exercise different muscle groups and parts of the body, assuming that you’re swimming for fitness, rather than to practice a specific technique.

Breast Stroke

This stroke gives a total body workout, requiring equal effort from the arms and legs.  It is a pretty tiring stroke, and you may not want to set the water flow too fast, as it’s a relatively slow stroke.

Back Stroke

This is usually a relatively relaxing and easy stroke.  It’s very good for ‘resting’ between bouts of more vigorous swimming, without stopping moving entirely.  Again, it’s quite a slow stroke so you probably don’t want the water flow set too fast.

Front Crawl

This is usually the fastest stroke, and is particularly good for working the arms and upper body.  You probably want the swim spa’s water flow set faster for this stroke.

Side Stroke

This is a good stroke for working arms, legs and core muscles, and is particularly good if you need to build up strength in particular limbs after an injury, for example.  Otherwise remember to swap sides regularly to work muscles on both sides of your body.

Butterfly

One of the more difficult strokes, the butterfly involves wide, vigorous circular motions of both arms simultaneously.  It does require more space than other strokes, so be careful you’re positioned carefully in the centre of your swim spa to avoid bashing into the sides.

 

As you can see there are plenty of different swimming strokes and exercises you can do in your swim spa.  It’s always good to cool down after an exercise session with some more stretches and maybe some breathing exercises to prevent muscles from tensing up after the fact.