Exercise apparatus

Claim 1

Exercise apparatus for increasing the flexibility and strength, conditioning the cardiovascular system, controlling the weight of, and otherwise benefiting, a human user, said exercise apparatus comprising: a tank or other receptacle which has a horizontal floor and vertically extending side walls and is designed to contain an aqueous fluid, said receptacle being sufficiently large to accommodate a human user in an erect position and to contain sufficient fluid to reach at least the waist of a human in that position; an exercise device housed in said receptacle and adapted to be submerged in the fluid with which said receptacle is filled, said exercise device being supported from, and secured relative to, the floor of the receptacle and comprising a frame and means which: (a) is supported from said frame above the floor of the receptacle with the lower part of said body of fluid between it and the receptacle floor, and (b) is elastically displaceable in vertical directions by the exertions of the human user of the exercise apparatus against the resistance offered by those bodies of liquid in the receptacle below and above said frame-supported means to benefit said user as aforesaid; means extending between the side walls of said receptacle and engageable by the hands of the user via which said user can stabilize the position of his or her body relative to said receptacle while exerting himself or herself to elastically displace said frame-supported means as aforesaid; means for so fixing said hands-engageable means to the side walls of the receptacle at the upper edges thereof that said means can be displaced to and located at different positions along said receptacle to thereby meet the needs of different users of said apparatus; and means for facilitating the ingress and egress of the user into and out of said receptacle, said receptacle having vertically extending front and rear walls and the means for facilitating the ingress and egress of the user comprising first and second, vertically extending ladders respectively mounted on the outside and inside of the rear wall of the exercise apparatus receptacle and means so supporting the second of said ladders from said receptacle rear wall that said ladder can be removed after the human user of the exercise apparatus has entered the receptacle of that apparatus to thereby eliminate any possibility that the user might be injured by said second ladder, said first ladder having a series of vertically spaced apart rungs, said second ladder having vertically extensible stanchions at the opposite sides thereof, and said ladder-supporting means comprising hooks which are located at the upper ends of said stanchions and are engageable over one of the rungs of the first ladder.