Stretching, walking and running in the shallow end of the pool is a good pool exercise even if you’re not able to swim the full length. Patients can start off by carrying out a stretching programme in the water and then progress onto walking with floats. Once you have progressed to this stage, then you can try walking across the shallow end of a pool and increasing the number of widths, pushing and walking with high knees and also jogging in the water. There are many good and safe exercises even if you can't swim confidently.
If you are a non-swimmer you can use the water to practise walking and balance, gentle upper limb movements or spinal mobility. There are lots of guided aqua-aerobic classes or hydrotherapy groups that help with this so you feel safe in the water.
For those patients that are carrying a minor injury, swimming can be used as cross training and adapting the stroke with drills or floats can completely avoid exercising the injured limb whilst still giving you a challenge. For patients suffering with neck or back pain or for those patients that are unsure of going in this environment alone then a physiotherapist will be able to offer you guidance or design a training plan.