Aquatic therapy and rehabilitation is a growing market and provides an excellent service to clients. As a health professional, here’s the opportunity to enhance your career with the most current essential information you need to get started. Feel confidence in the concepts, compare the efficacy and outcomes to land-based therapy, try several popular aquatic therapy protocols during the in-pool lab, and access resources for more in-depth knowledge.

The seminar will include basic aquatic principles including buoyancy, resistance, and hydrostatic pressure, and how those principles change the biomechanics of movement patterns. Participants will experience how the principles affect balance, stabilization and mobility, and how to use laminar flow, turbulence, concentric and eccentric contraction, temperature, positional variations and to improve the client’s benefits. Some terminology is reviewed.

Aquatic therapy is shown to improve function in certain clients more rapidly than traditional therapies. Video demonstrations, a review of outcomes (who aquatic rehab works for, indications and contraindications, what diagnoses it helps, why it’s helpful, and when to use it) and the concepts of aquatic therapy protocols are discussed.

We will determine the concepts and methodology of popular aquatic therapy and rehabilitation techniques, patient populations that these modalities can work for, and discuss competency and where to learn more about each. Participants will determine which techniques are safe and appropriate for which specialized clientele.

Different organizations, individuals, events, and protocols are covered during the resource segment of the presentation. The participants will find out what information is available from each organization, presenter, or workshop. Therapists working with specific populations will know where to access information regarding that population group.

Finally, this presentation will allow participants to experiment with the basic concepts of Ai Chi, Aquatic Feldenkrais®, Bad Ragaz, Triple S, PNF, Halliwick, the Burdenko Method, BackHab, and Watsu® in the pool.