A 45-minute music-led shallow-water class for older adults, run in your existing pool in an off-peak slot. Participants stand on the floor and work at the wall, water walking, wall work and strength against drag, to a soundtrack, in a group that comes back. The wall is the apparatus. Nothing is installed, nothing is hired, and the shallow end is back to public use the minute the class ends. What you buy is occupancy: a standing weekly booking in a slot that is currently water, with the attendance counted and reported to you.
Nine tracks at 128 to 130 BPM, one per segment; changes on the chorus; the group moving as one to the beat. That is what people turn up for and what they bring a neighbour to, and it is why attendance is reported to you as the headline rather than buried under it. The tracks are beat-mixed fitness covers from Power Music, and the licence position is settled per pool, because the music is a feature of the product, not background.
Water scales in ways a chair or a bench cannot: depth, hand shape against drag, lever length, distance from the wall, tempo against the music. Every participant works the same track at their own five settings, so the person with two hands on the wall and the person travelling the width are in the same session, on the same song, with nothing to be seen in. Two half-filled classes become one full slot.
Heel raises, hip work, squats against buoyancy, push-ups and pulls, all at the edge of your pool. No lane ropes moved for storage, no floats, no kit left in your plant room.
Attendance and retention per session and per block, and four functional tests on the deck at week 1 and week 12, reported to you in writing with the change and its direction. Not a grade, not a traffic light.
Aquatic exercise in older adults is well supported, and every figure on this page carries its source. Where a figure has a limitation its own authors raise, a wide interval, a dose the program does not reach, it is written here rather than left for your clinical staff to find.
The program was designed around a shallow end that is empty mid-morning, a wall that is already there, a population that does not use the pool at 6 am, and a kiosk. That describes most public pools on the Sunshine Coast.
A standing weekly booking of up to 10 in a slot the lap swimmers have left. Attendance per session is counted and reported, so the value of the slot is a number, not an impression.
Standing depth, floor visible, a wall with a graspable edge, steps with a rail. A roped-off width for the travelling rung. Nothing installed and nothing stored.
The people your lane program cannot reach: sore joints, replaced hips and knees, low confidence on land. Water removes the barriers that keep them off land programs (Bartels et al., Cochrane, 2016; Waller et al., Age and Ageing, 2016). No swimming required; nobody leaves the floor.
Every session ends at the café where the pool has one. The social half is designed in, not incidental. It is what keeps a twelve-week program at twelve weeks, and your kiosk sees it too.
The slot, the shallow end, a place for a speaker, your supervision arrangement, a noticeboard and a liaison contact. No staff time in the session beyond your own lifeguard policy, no capital cost.
The structure of a session never changes across the block. The difficulty does, governed by a written progression model rather than instructor judgement on the day.
Progression is one continuous ladder, not lanes. Each participant sits on a rung of each dial, recorded by name. Anchor markers are shapes, ▮▮ ▮ ◻ ▷, so they read the same in print and to a colourblind reader.
The strength effect above was produced by programs running two to three sessions a week, and it peaked at 24 weeks (Wang et al., Frontiers in Public Health, 2025). A once-weekly twelve-week block sits under that dose. This page says so rather than implying one session a week delivers the meta-analysis result.
It fills a slot, it builds the group, and it is the frequency most operators can give a new booking. It is under the strength dose and is described that way.
Where a second off-peak slot exists, a second session in the same week is the version that sits inside the evidence, and it is a second hour of occupancy for you.
The effect in the dose analysis kept rising to 24 weeks. A group that re-enrols for a second twelve-week block is closer to the literature than one that does not, and the second block has the harder rungs waiting for it.
There is no pool at home. Participants who use your pool in public hours between classes are doing the right thing, and that is more utilisation, not less.
The 30-second chair stand and the Timed Up and Go are the instruments the aquatic meta-analyses use as outcomes, so the program measures the things the literature says should move. All four tests are performed on the deck, dry, before entry, because a land test performed in water is not the same test and has no norms. Same tester, same order, same time of day, same footwear, same walking aid.
Scored against CDC STEADI age and sex norms for context. A participant who needs their arms is tested with arms, recorded as such, and reported as change only.
Source: CDC STEADI, 30-Second Chair Stand.
Used as a change score only, never as a falls screen. A 2014 meta-analysis found pooled sensitivity of 0.31 at the 13.5-second threshold and concluded TUG should not be used in isolation to identify individuals at high risk of falls.
Source: Barry E et al. BMC Geriatrics, 2014.
Reported as the stage reached, and nothing more. No falls-risk category is attached to it in this program.
Source: CDC STEADI, 4-Stage Balance Test.
Needs 8 metres of straight, dry concourse. Where the deck cannot provide it, the foyer is used or the test is recorded as not testable; the distance is never shortened and scaled. Reported as a graded value in metres per second, never as a pass or a category.
Source: Studenski S et al. JAMA, 2011.
Delivered by Glen Cook. There is no team and no subcontracting: the person in the specification is the person on the deck.
Group capped at 10, instructed from the deck with the whole group and the steps in eyeline (AUSactive, Aqua Exercise Instructor Guidelines, 2022). Entry and exit by the steps, one at a time, rail in hand, with a seat on the deck. Standing up out of the water’s support is when a participant is most likely to feel faint (Pendergast et al., Comprehensive Physiology, 2015), so the exit is run as the highest-risk part of the session.
Standing depth with the floor visible; steps with a rail; a wall with a graspable edge along the working length; a dry deck position with the group and the steps in view. A written pool assessment covering water, entry and exit, the wall, the deck, supervision, emergency arrangements and the music licence is completed on the assessment visit and supplied to you before the first paid session.
APSS Stage 1 pre-exercise screening for every participant, no exceptions (APSS, 2nd edition, 2025), plus your conditions of entry. Cardiac and respiratory history, orthostatic hypotension, seizure history, joint replacement, osteoporosis, Parkinson’s, post-stroke, cognitive impairment, vestibular history, anticoagulant use, open wounds and infection are flagged and routed to GP or physiotherapist clearance. Emergency contacts on paper for every participant; your pool emergency procedure read and signed. Any slip on the steps, unintended submersion or dizziness on exit: the session stops for that participant, the incident is recorded the same day and supplied to you, and a GP letter is offered. Loss of consciousness, chest pain, new confusion or seizure: 000 first.
A pool assessment takes about 30 minutes and settles whether this is viable, for you and for me: depth, entry and exit, the wall, the deck, your supervision policy, your licence position and your water temperature. You see the written assessment whether or not you proceed. If the pool does not work, that is a useful answer and it costs you nothing. Prefer email? Write to hello@glencook.fit or call 0488 883 408.