Swimming coaches’ professional development and training practices: an international survey

This study investigated swim coaches' perceptions of professional development issues and current training practices according to their coaching experience, education level, and gender. An online survey (January—April 2022) was completed by 123 swim coaches (96 male/27 female) of competitive swimmers based in 41 countries. The survey consisted of 36 questions divided into six sections: (1) background information, (2) developing swim coaching through learning, (3) self-evaluation, (4) interpersonal-intrapersonal interactions, (5) life skills, and (6) analyzing swimming performance. Pearson chi-square assessed the relationship between the frequency of responses and professional background and gender. The survey results indicated that swim coaches' educational level is potentially one of the most influential parameters affecting the coaches' perceptions about their own professional development. The data presented may be used for the future design of coach education programmes as they advance current knowledge on understanding psycho-social issues related to professional development and training perceptions involved in the competitive swimming environment

Novel insights into the physical activity continuum and cardiometabolic health in adults

The primary aims of this thesis were: 1) to examine the associations between physical activity behaviours and indices of cardiometabolic health in older adults; and 2) to explore the theoretical effect on cardiometabolic health markers by reallocating time between sedentary time, standing time, light intensity physical activity (LIPA) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in older adults. Due to strong evidence in support of the use of activPAL monitors for accurately measuring sedentary time, standing time and postural changes, the activPAL3 Micro was chosen for this body of research. To classify physical activity of different intensities, the ability of the activPAL3 Micro to predict energy expenditure was explored, and subsequently deemed not to be accurate. A count-to-activity threshold for the activPAL3 Micro was subsequently developed and validated to provide accurate measures of time spent in different intensity bands. Habitual physical activity data and cardiometabolic health markers were collected from 323 participants of the Mitchelstown Cohort Rescreen Study. Sedentary time had detrimental associations with body mass, percentage body fat, HDL-C, VLDL-C, triglycerides and diastolic blood pressure. Increased LIPA and MVPA were beneficially associated with body mass, BMI, percentage body fat, VLDL-C, triglycerides and blood pressure (to varying magnitudes). Only VLDL-C and triglycerides were beneficially associated with standing. Theoretically replacing sedentary time (by 10 minutes) with LIPA resulted in significant decreases in body composition measures and blood pressure. Replacement with MVPA resulted in significantly lower triglyceride levels. No beneficial changes were observed when replacing sedentary time with standing. The results suggest that LIPA has an important role for maintaining, and improving, cardiometabolic health, in conjunction with MVPA. The findings from this thesis can be used to inform future interventional studies, while also contributing to the development of future public health guidelines on how best to reduce sedentary time

Analysis of the competition programmes of elite and sub-elite swimmers: The influence of sex, stroke and race distance

The purpose of this study was to analyse contemporary performance data in elite and sub-elite Irish swimmers, to explore the number of days and races required for swimmers to achieve their fastest competitive performances and how this may be influenced by sex, stroke and race distance. The initial dataset consisted of n=3930 observations on n=56 swimmers, with n1=2709 (68.9%) long course (LC) observations and n2=1221 (31.1%) short course (SC) observations. The main findings indicated that, firstly, the swimmers (LC & SC) produced their fastest swim in their first race of the season, approximately 39% of the time. Secondly, there were no significant differences between male and female swimmers regarding the number of days and races required to achieve their fastest performances. The final key finding identified the number of days and races between first and fastest performance was influenced by (a) stroke, for example, LC and SC freestyle and individual medley swimmers required less races and shorter timeframes to fastest swim, with breaststroke requiring the greatest number of mean days in LC and SC formats and (b) race distance, for example, across LC and SC, 400 m swimmers required fewer races (n =1.83 & 1.64) and shorter time frame (n =24.83 & 21.26 days) to fastest swim than other distances. These findings are valuable to coaches and practitioners, as (a) they can provide guide-lines when designing competition programmes, and (b) support exploration of what a swimmer’s competition may look like in terms of volume and duration to support the fastest performance.</p

The effect of exercise training intensity on VO2 max in healthy adults: an overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

This study aimed to evaluate systematic reviews and meta-analyses that have examined the effect of exercise training on VO2max in healthy individuals at different intensities. Five databases were searched: EBSCOhost, MEDLINE/PubMed, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Eligibility criteria for selecting reviews included systematic reviews and meta-analyses of healthy adults that examined the effect of lower intensity training (LIT) and/or high intensity training (HIT) on VO2max. Eleven reviews met the eligibility criteria. All reviews were of moderate-to-very strong methodological quality. 'e included reviews reported data from 179 primary studies with an average of 23 ± 10 studies per review. All reviews included in this overview showed that exercise training robustly increased VO2max at all intensities. 'ree meta-analyses that compared LIT versus HIT protocols on VO2max reported small/moderate beneficial effects for HIT over LIT; however, the beneficial effects of HIT on VO2max appear to be moderated by training variables other than intensity (e.g., training impulse, interval length, training volume, and duration) and participants’ baseline characteristics (e.g., age and fitness levels). Overall, evidence from this overview suggests that the apparent differences between LIT and HIT protocols on VO2max were either small, trivial, or inconclusive, with several methodological considerations required to standardise research designs and draw definitive conclusions