The use of swimming machines as a personalized way to train for triathlons or marathons is on the rise. Companies like Endless Pool tout these workout pools as the only exercise athletes - such as triathletes - need to improve their stroke, speed or core muscles.
But how real are the benefits? Delaware Public Media’s Katie Peikes asked athletes and experts.
Middletown resident Jonathan Heap is a triathlete. He has a scrapbook full of bib numbers and pictures of races. He proudly shows a picture of the first half marathon he ever did, the first race he won for his age group overall — a 5k last year. He smiles thinking about a Turkey Trot he ran last Thanksgiving.
To train, he runs, cycles and three times a week swims in a 13-feet long, 6-feet wide, 4-feet deep swimming machine that fills his garage.
He integrates it into the constant running and biking he does to physically and mentally prepare for his races.
For 15 to 30 minutes three times a week, Heap turns on the current in his pool and swims a freestyle stroke.
“Normally I would get into a good pace right about in the middle and just kind of keep pace on that going back and hitting my feet against the back,” Heap said. “You kind of just swim at a good pace.”
He increases the speed of the current to get his adrenaline pumping and swims at a steady, but vigorous pace.
Using the pool not only improves his swimming skills for competition, but Heaps believes it prevents multi-use injuries that can happen when someone spends a lot of time running.
“You’re more likely to get injuries from just running all the time and pounding the pavement from the excess stress from running on your body,” he said.
The idea for using this type of personalized pool that allows an athlete to swim against a current spawned in the early 1990s.
James Murdock is the chief innovation officer for Pennsylvania-based Endless Pools, the aquatic company that sold Heap his swimming machine. Murdock said his father swam in irrigation canals in Arizona and always liked the idea of swimming in one place.
If you close your eyes it would feel like you were swimming in open water. -James Murdock describing Endless Pools.
“If you want to swim in place, ideally you have something like a canal or a river and you’re moving opposite that direction and you stay in place,” Murdock said. “In practice it’s hard to move vast amounts of water, so you compromise.”
The ultimate compromise, Murdock said, is to swim against a jet. But he said swimming against a jet doesn’t provide an athlete with a strenuous workout.
“If you make that current wider and deeper, the swimmer begins to feel as if they’re swimming in open water, and that’s the goal,” Murdock said.
In an Endless Pool, a propeller creates a broad and deep current wider than a swimmer’s stroke. As the swimmer works out, water moves from the front to the back of the pool and goes through return channels to continue its flow.
“If you close your eyes it would feel like you were swimming in open water and you wouldn’t get the sense you were enclosed and cramped,” Murdock said.
This open water simulation is what Murdock says replaces many types of training, from swimming laps to pool aerobics. That’s because of research showing resistance swimming helps the body use and build muscle.
But University of Delaware Swim Coach John Hayman says this training tool alone is not enough to replace other types of swimming.
“I think it has its benefit,” Hayman said. “I think that the limits, though, can be, with the current you do have to change your stroke a little bit because it can push you from side to side so now you’re going to have to make some adaptations to your stroke to stay in that current, so that could be a little bit of a downfall because you’re changing your mechanics to stay within that stream.”
And flip turns are impossible to do in a swimming machine; Hayman says this means swimmers lose some of the advantage in working the abdominal muscles.
Hayman says competitive swimmers at UD, instead, do tethered swimming. That’s a type of resistance swimming that’s done without a current.
"You have a strap around the waistbelt and it’s tied to a stationary object whether it’s a starting block or a backstroke pole, and they just swim in one place," Hayman said. "It’s good for watching strokes or making corrective stroke work with them but again, it’s limited use because of the boredom and because you don’t have — swimming in one spot with no current, you’re not getting true resistance on that.
That boredom factor is one of the reasons Hayman says why he doesn’t have his team use swimming machines to train.
“I think it’s great as a limited spot, but because of the main differences, you have to change your stroke to stay within that current and you are only training at one speed,” Hayman said. “Whereas in a pool you can change speeds all the time, you can manipulate your swimming a lot more to train different systems in your body With those stationary pools, you’re just kind of limited with that one area.”
That doesn’t bother Heap, the owner of the Endless Pool housed in his garage. He believes spending between $10,000 to $40,000 for the pool is worth an investment into a healthier lifestyle.
He integrates it into the constant running and biking he does to physically and mentally prepare for his races.
Heap’s wife, Nicole, and their four children also use the pool to train, though not as rigorously as their husband and father.
“There are days I come home from work and I’m so tired I don’t want to work out at all and I’ll get in the pool, and then afterwards I’ll feel revived,” Nicole Heap said. “I feel like the stress is gone, I’m just relaxed so I definitely notice a difference after a swim.”
Jonathan Heap said he too, feels the benefits of swimming one place, but continues to compliment it with other workouts to train for races.
“I do notice a difference after a swim,” he said. “The stress just seems to melt away into the water.”
After running a recent duathlon, Heap says he felt like his endurance and cardio health have improved. He believes training in his pool for the last three months has made a difference.
“After the run sometimes and I get in here, I feel like I don’t even have to do yoga because my joints feel great,” he said. “I feel great when I get out, it doesn’t feel like I swam for half an hour.”
He continued, “I feel invigorated.”