Aqua Aerobics 12 Weeks Challenge To Lose Weight

Last year, my friends had started to join an aqua aerobics group for various reasons, for example getting fit, building muscles, sleeping better at night, fitting into a skinny jeans etc. But the ultimate reason for joining an exercise regime is usually trying to get rib of the fats and cellulites formed on our ever “young” bodies.

My friends had sung great praises of aqua aerobics, telling me that it had given them a great work out that surprisingly could sweat a lot, used a lot of strength and built muscles and of course fit better into their clothes.

I was sceptical. I was someone who was not crazy about exercise and fitness during my younger days. Exercise was never a hobby of mine and I did minimal exercise during my schooling days. Now, as my age number is climbing, I do not have the luxury of being youthful with high metabolism rate. Whatever I eat, it will accumulate fat on my tummy and thighs. Whenever I go couch potato way, it also adds more weights to my body. And I don’t even want to look at my weighing machine because I know it will give me bad news and makes me depressed. Sigh, how I wish I was 20 again!!!

So this new year, I decided to make a new resolution, i.e. to try out aqua aerobics and the goal is to lose weight and look fabulous. Sounds good!

There is a public swimming pool less than 1km away from my home that offers aqua aerobics with once a week one hour session for 12 weeks consecutively.

On my first lesson, there were about 20 of us (all females) in the beginners group. Then I found out that most of them are the regulars, meaning they have been doing this aqua aerobics for 2 years. Wow! Besides that, most of them are over 50 years old. Double WOW!

The female instructor is very friendly and very welcoming. After taking the attendance (like being in school), she started the routine with loud but energizing pop/dance musics (I like this already).

All the participants were in the pool while the instructor was standing on the pool side doing the routine. The warm up exercises were done in the pool where we marched on the spot with our bodies submerged in the pool except our heads and shoulders. Basically, all the exercises were like aerobics but with much more resistance from the water pressure. So this is the beauty of aqua aerobics as you have to have strength to do the movements in the water. I considered this a resistance training with fun musics that you can do in a group.

Another point in its favour is that you do not have to worry about falling because you are surrounded by water. This is a non-impact exercise with water providing cushion for you, just like you were an astronaut in an anti-gravity environment. I had an incident which I was doing the aqua aerobics routine and I slipped (oppss..). But I was all good. If I was on land, I would have gotten a nasty swollen ankle. So now I can understand why the elderly likes this exercise.

In the routine, we walked (in the water), jogged, jumped, lifted our knees, shake our booties and so on together with the musics. During the routine, our instructor did point out that we need to have a correct posture in order to get the benefits from this exercise. Besides that, having correct posture also helps to prevent injury of the neck and spine. But what is most important to me is that it can help get rib of the fat and cellulite around the tummy and thighs. Yay!

Firstly, I find out that the movement in the water can be very slow for beginners like me. The instructor did give me encouraging words and told me in time I can follow the routine with ease once I have the strength to do so with much practice.

Secondly, this exercise very much depends on the weather. If it was raining or having thunder storm, the instructor would have to cancel the class. So the instructor has taken down everyone’s phone numbers so that she can inform us if she has to cancel the class due to bad weather.

Then you have to invest in good sun block lotion to prevent sun spots on your face and your body. I am currently using a sun block lotion with SPF 50+ and PA++++.

After class ended, all of us would try to get a shower stall to wash up. This could be a problem because there were at least 20 of us trying to get to the shower stalls and the swimming complex just does not have enough facilities for us. So some of us got to resort to just having a quick rinse at the shower next to the pool and a change in the toilet, so we could go home and had a proper shower.

After the first lesson, I did feel a slight soreness on my muscles. But our instructor had told us that this first lesson was very easy because she did not incorporate any floating devices in the routine. The next lesson, we will have to use the “noodle” to do our routine.

I am looking forward to the next lesson. So stay tune to my next update.