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Water Exercise Study Reveals Benefits to Participants, Researchers

Kinesiology is known as the study of anatomy, physiology, and the mechanics of body movement in humans. By studying the components of such movement, exercise physiologists around the world and at Texas A&M have made significant contributions to our basic understanding of how we move and operate physiologically.  Every day, exercise physiologist within the Department of Health and Kinesiology (HLKN) are contributing to the pool of literature that continues to educate the general public and the science community. 

In an effort to enlighten people on the best modes of exercise for their body, faculty and students in HLKN are coming together to conduct research in  the hope of discovering unique and exciting information about how human bodies-big and tall, short and small-adapt and change with exercise. 

In a study conducted last year, and currently beginning phase two, faculty and students examined the changes of the body's make-up by comparing underwater treadmill walking versus land-based treadmill walking.  The second phase of this study will look at older, overweight individuals and will examine muscle changes after a single bout of exercise. 

The second phase includes work from Nicholas Greene (Ph.D. candidate), and Kinesiology faculty members Dr. Stephen Crouse (Professor), Dr. James Fluckey (Assistant Professor), and Dr. Steven Riechman (Assistant Professor). 

This collaboration effort began after an initial study to look at the benefits of water exercise, which was led by Greene and Crouse and funded by HyrdoWorx, found no significant difference in body composition changes following water or land-based exercise.  The researchers learned that when you burn the same amount of calories on land as you do in water, the benefits to health are the same.  The difference, says Crouse, is that many people feel less pain and less soreness attributed to working out when they train in the water.

For Carolyn Lohman, a study participant and founder of the Lohman Learning Community, being less sore was the best part of the study.

"My knees and hips did not hurt when doing the exercise nor afterward either," says Lohman. "I was doing many more miles each session than I could possibly do on land and at a faster rate too."

Drs. Fluckey and Riechman have begun their portion of phase two by taking muscle biopsies from select participants. With these biopsies, Fluckey, Riechman and Greene will look for cellular changes that occur after exercise.

The laboratories involved with this study are the Applied Exercise Physiology Laboratory, housed in the Sydney and J.L. Huffines Institute for Sports Medicine and Human Performance; the Resistance Exercise & Nutrition Laboratory and the Muscle Biology Laboratory.  All HLKN laboratories have similar goals: to impact the field of science and to encourage people to be more active.

"HLKN is really well known among other schools for the excellence of their research and the quality of the graduates," says Lohman. "With the aging population in this country, it seems to me that better health can be achieved through advances in this kind of research."

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