Beach Workouts: How to Train Effectively by the Water

Not all local swimming holes are suitable training environments, so you may want to do a safety and suitability assessment before you dive into serious training at the water’s edge. With that being said, if you have access to a  body of water that is big enough and a shoreline that is sufficiently long and wide, you may have a perfect open-air gym hiding in plain sight.

Nature’s swimming pool

The extent to which the water of your local beach can benefit your workout has a lot to do with the slope of the shoreline, the depth of the water, and the safety of the area. For the sake of the example, let’s assume that all of those things are at least close to being ideal.

Straight out of the gate, you have easy access to an open-water swimming course. Swimming is a challenging activity even if it’s performed in the pristine, predictable environment of an indoor swimming pool with dedicated lap lanes. In a natural body of water like an ocean or a lake, you’re contending with currents and other forces that are acting against you. This requires your muscles to work harder by making miniature adjustments. 

Whether you decide to swim for long distances as a means of training aerobically, or you design a HIIT workout consisting of quick out-and-back sprints, an outdoor body of water grants you instant access to possibly the best means of total-body conditioning, and one that requires the use of zero specialized equipment.

Nature’s challenging (yet forgiving) running surface

Once you step out of the water and onto either a rocky or sandy shore, you’re now standing on one of the most challenging courses for running or jogging. After donning footwear designed to contend with the features of the landscape — which on a sandy surface may mean that you train barefoot — you can begin to run along a surface that is predictably unpredictable. 

This unpredictability of the surface forces the muscles of your legs to adapt rapidly every time your foot makes contact with stones or sand. Studies have also shown (as if you couldn’t tell on your own) that running on sand requires greater energy per stride than running on a paved surface, while also doing you the favor of reducing impact forces.

In short, no matter how you choose to use the beach — even if you’re only using it to walk — you have access to a specialized surface that can’t be replicated in a gym, but which can be hugely beneficial to your physical development, or your recovery from certain lower body injuries.

Nature’s weight

Thanks to the innovative minds that are constantly looking to transform everything around them into a workout apparatus, you can now purchase several resistance training devices that achieve their full potential when wielded poolside or oceanside. 

Different shaped orbs, kettlebells, and sandbags are now designed to be filled with water, used for resistance training workouts, and then emptied as soon as the workouts are over. Generally, these devices max out at 40 pounds, but if you’re like most people, you can accomplish a lot with 40 pounds. Also, from a standpoint of travel convenience, they are essentially weightless when all the water has been drained from them.

By combining water weights with the beach environment, you can perform resistance training workouts consisting of exercises like lunges, squats, push-presses, and overhead presses in the sand, or in the shallow water. This latter option can either increase the ease or challenge of the resistance movements depending on how you choose to incorporate it.

A Unique Outdoor Gym

Each component on its own is worth your while, but by combining water weights with a beach environment, you can seamlessly blend resistance training with swimming and running. In no other setting would you be able to move so freely between multiple methods of natural cardiovascular training and resistance training. So, if you needed an excuse to visit the beach more often, now you have a very valid reason to spend time by the water every single day.

Takeaways

1. Beachside areas provide unique training environments that offer you many advantages over other settings.

2. Open water swimming requires your muscles to work harder than when you swim in pools, providing you with one of the best total body conditioning workouts.

3. Both sandy and rocky beaches are excellent running surfaces for triggering muscle development in your legs, while sand is also a forgiving running surface that reduces impact forces.

4. Many modern fitness devices are designed to be filled with water to boost their weight, making it easy for you to perform resistance exercises near the water’s edge, while still traveling lightly.

5. By incorporating all of these elements together, you can transform your local beach into an incredible open-air training environment.