Exercisers Make a Splash by Moving Aerobics Class to Pool : Fitness: Latest trend in working out gets you wet from more than just sweat. Resistance created by water provides maximum benefits without adding stress to joints.

Six heads bobbed up and down, some in time to the ‘50s “Yakety-Yak” blaring from a boombox.

Waves splashed over the edge of the pool as swimmers scissor-kicked and sliced their arms through the water. The instructor stopped, pausing halfway through an hour class of water fitness, and had the exercisers check their heart rates.

From Cybill Shepherd to Bo Jackson, the splashy set is making water exercise the latest fitness trend in California and across the nation.

“In the ‘60s it was tennis, in the ‘70s was the running craze. It was aerobics in the ‘80s and in the ‘90s, it is water,” said water fitness pioneer Lynda Huey.

Huey says California is where the real fitness form of water aerobics started. In 1986, she developed the “Waterpower Workout” based on her personal training with injured Olympic athletes at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

Her company, Huey’s Athletic Network in Santa Monica, offers group classes as well as private training, which she has provided to celebrities such as Shepherd and Paula Abdul.

In addition to aerobic-type exercises, people are walking and running in swimming pools, using the water’s resistance instead of gravity to provide the workout. The water’s buoyancy eases the pounding trauma that land-based exercise gives the body.

“The beauty of the water is that you can work both halves of every muscle pair in the same exercise,” said Huey. “You get a better-balanced exercise.”

Huey has had to deal with stereotypes about water exercises being used only by elderly patients with arthritis or muscular disorders.

“We had to break the stigma in people’s minds of little old ladies in shower caps out there in the pool. Once they saw a Bo Jackson or a Wilt Chamberlain or a Carl Lewis in the pool, they changed their minds.”

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Water exercise is not simply moving gym-style aerobics into the pool. An instructor must adapt the moves, taking into account the resistance of the water, which slows down the speed of movement, as well as the buoyancy, which allows for broader, ballet-like lunges and higher, jumping exercises.

“You can’t just take a land aerobics person and say, ‘OK, get in the water and do a water-aerobics class.’ The water speed is different than land speed,” said Los Angeles Recreation and Parks aquatic director Renee Peace. She claims her year-round classes are three times as full as those at private gyms.

Water fitness instructors design classes intended to draw a broad range of people to their pools.

“Over the past five years we are starting to see an increase in men. The programs are less dancy, and more sports-oriented,” said Julie See, president of the Aquatic Exercise Assn., a nonprofit organization that has certified more than 11,000 water fitness instructors since 1986.

Triathletes use deep water exercise to stay in shape, adding extra benefit to their workout by wearing devices that increase water resistance and buoyancy.

“You don’t have to be able to swim, you don’t get your face wet or your hair wet. It’s a non-threatening activity,” said John Spannuth, head of the nonprofit U.S. Water Fitness Assn. in Boynton Beach, Fla. “Whoever heard of a person falling and breaking their ankle in the water?”

Even pregnant women who can’t take the jarring moves of land aerobics can participate in step aerobic classes comfortably in the water with specially weighted equipment that won’t float away.

People with hip replacements can do lunges. Their doctors encourage them to get into the water, but not all insurance companies will pay for one-on-one training. Many recovering from surgery or illness join group classes.

“It is so refreshing. I don’t get bored with it like other exercise programs. I don’t find it difficult or straining. It looks easy, but you can make it as hard as you want,” said Terri Severin, 45, a marketing consultant from Santa Monica who has fibromyalgia, an illness characterized by chronic pain and stiffness of muscles.

“People who are in pain when there is pressure on the joint feel better when they are in the water. They get into the pool and they are able to do things immediately that they could not do out of the pool,” said Rob Landel, director of the University of California Physical Therapy Associates.

Even though water fitness benefits a broad range of people, it can be harmful for the overeager. Beginners beguiled by the cool comfort of the water tend to overexercise. Huey says the heart rate in water is lower for athletes and higher for the unfit or obese. Instructors must watch for exercisers going beyond their limits.