Several studies have been carried
out in order to identify the factors
that can predict swimming performance.
However, all these studies only
analyzed determinant factors in a
single moment. It was not taken into
account the longitudinal stability and
changes, as a result of individual development,
new training methods
and technological sophistication

Barbosa, Tiago M.

Bragada, José A.

Costa, M.J.

Marinho, D.A.

Reis, V.M.

Silva, A.J.

Reis, Victor M.

Biblioteca Digital do IPB

  Mário J Costa 1,4, José A Bragada 2,4, Daniel A Marinho 3,4, Victor M Reis 1,4, António J Silva 1,4, Tiago M Barbosa 2,4 LONGITUDINAL ASSESSMENT OF SWIMMING PERFORMANCE IN THE 200-m FREESTYLE EVENT Chatard JC, Padilla S, Carzorla G, La-cour JR. Influence of body height, weight, hydrostatic lift and train-ing on the energy cost of the front crawl. N Z L Sports Med. 1985;  13:82-84 Donato A, Tench K, Glueck D, Seals D, Eskurza I, Tanaka H. Declines in physiological functional capacity with age: a longitudinal study in peak swimming performance. J Appl Physiol. 2003; 94: 764-769 Kjendlie PL, Ingjer F, Madsen O, Stallman RK, Stray-Gundersen J. Differences in the energy cost be-tween children and adults during front crawl swimming. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2003; 91: 473-480 Landis JR, Koch GG. The measure-ment of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 1977; 37:439-446.  Malina RM, Bouchard C. Growth, maturation, and physical activity. In: Risk Factors and Children’s Health. Champaign, Illinois: Hu-man Kinetics Books (1991). Malina RM. Adherence to physical activity from childhood to adult-hood: a perspective forma track-ing studies. Quest 2001; 53:346-355. Matos N, Winsley RL. Trainability of young athletes and overtraining. J Sport Science, 2007; 6: 353-367 Pyne D, Trewin C, Hopkins W. Pro-gression and variability of com-petitive performance of Olympic swimmers. J Sports Sci 2004: 22(7):613-20. Stewart A, Hopkins W. Consistency of swimming performance within and between competitions. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2000; 32(5):997-1001. Zamparo P. Effects of age and gender on the propelling efficiency of the arm stroke. Eur J Appl Physiol, 2006; 97:52–58  1 Department of Sport Sciences, Univesity of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal 2 Department of Sport Sciences, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Bragança, Portugal 3 Department of Sport Sciences, Univesity of Beira-Interior, Covilhã, Portugal 4 Research Center in Sports Science, Health and Human Development, Vila Real, Portugal Several studies have been carried out in order to identify the factors that can predict swimming perform-ance. However, all these studies only analyzed determinant factors in a single moment. It was not taken into account the longitudinal stability and changes, as a result of individual de-velopment, new training methods and technological sophistication. Also was demonstrated that progres-sion and variability of performance between competitions are useful for researchers and practitioners inter-ested in factors that affect perform-ance [8].  Indeed, the number of studies about swimming perform-ance, adopting longitudinal ap-proaches is reduced [e.g., 8, 9].  So far, appears not exist any research tracking the change and stability of swimmer’s performance. The aim of this study was to track and analyze the stability of the 200-m freestyle performance throughout the swim-mer’s career, from children to adult age.  INTRODUCTION SUBJECTS. Twenty nine Portuguese male swimmers were analyzed for seven consecutive seasons between 12 and 18 years old.   DATA COLLECTION. Swimming per-formance was collected using the best personal time in the 200-m Freestyle event in each season. Per-formances were collected from offi-cial competitions, on a short course pool (regional, national or interna-tional level). The official times were consulted on rankings tables pro-vided by the Portuguese Swimming Federation and in an internet data-base (www.swimrankings.net, March 2009). At the age of 18, 7 were inter-national level swimmers, 15 national level ones, and 7 regional level.  STATISTICAL PROCEDURES. An ex-ploratory data analysis was per-formed to identify possible errors in data input, outliers and to assess data normality (Shapiro-Wilk test). Longitudinal assessment was made based in two approaches: (i) mean stability; (ii) normative stability. For mean stability quartiles, means plus standard deviations were computed for each chronological age. Data variation was analyzed with ANOVA repeated measures followed by a post-hoc test (Bonferroni test). Nor-mative stability was analyzed with self-correlation (Correlation of Pear-son) between the performances throughout the seven seasons. It was defined that stability was: i) high if r ≥ 0.60; (ii) moderate if 0.30 < r < 0.60; (iii) low if r < 0.30, as suggested by Malina [6]. It was also calculated the Cohen’s Kappa (K), with a confi-dence interval of 95%. The qualita-tive interpretation of Kappa values was: (i) excellent if K > 0.75; (ii) mod-erate if 0.40 < K < 0.75; (iii) low if K < 0.40 [4]. All statistical procedures were computed with SPSS software’s (v. 13.0, Apache Software Founda-tion, Chicago, IL, USA). However, K value was computed with the Longi-tudinal Data Analysis software (v. 3.2, Dallas), USA). Significant level was set at p < 0.05.   As a conclusion, the prediction of adult swimmer’s performance level, based on children performance is moderate. How-ever, it seems that the change from 13 to 14 years old can be a milestone. At mo-ment the ability to predict the swimmer’s REFERENCES   METHODS (ii) a decrease in physiological functional capacity with age [2] or; (iii) a slowdown or stagnation in the development of anthro-pometric characteristics [5].  Table 1. Self-correlation values throughout swimmer’s career.  * p < 0.05  The K value, expressing the stability throughout the overall swimmer’s career, was moderate (K = 0.455 ± 0.057) with 0.398 < K < 0.512 for a 95 % of confidence interval. Based on a so long career, it is clearly that swimmers performance stabil-ity is difficult to maintain always on a high level. However, the change from 14 to 15 years old appears to show a sharp increase in stability. This can be explained by: i) maturational process, that provides greater availability for training process, in order to obtain more ambitious performances, ii) consolidation of values and culture of swimming performance acquired through-out swimmer’s career.   RESULTS AND DISCUSSION   CONCLUSION Chronological age 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 12 1             13 0.902* 1           14 0.751* 0.882* 1         15 0.672* 0.748* 0.841* 1       16 0.593* 0.699* 0.779* 0.929* 1     17 0.536* 0.589* 0.686* 0.850* 0.884* 1   18 0.536* 0.561* 0.644* 0.813* 0.862* 0.955* 1 To the Portuguese Swimming Federation for providing the offi-cial times. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There was a trend for a performance improvement throughout the swim-mer’s career from children to adult age presented by figure 1. Significant variations in the mean swim per-formance were verified [F(1,28) = 11815.908; p < 0.01].  Post-hoc test verified significant variations be-tween all chronological ages ana-lyzed (p < 0.01) except for the pair wise comparison between 16-17 years old and 17-18 years old that were not-significant. This can be ex-plained by changes that occurred during swimmers development, in different maturational stages. As swimming performance is deter-mined by different parameters, the swimmers development will affect the energy cost of swimming [3]. Changes in anthropometric charac-teristics, like body length and body mass, are identified as causes to in-crease energy cost [1]. Along with these morphological changes, devel-opment shows an increase in swim-mers muscular strength. It appears that hormonal development that oc-curs during maturation has a deter-minant role in increasing muscle size [7]. Constant training also contrib-utes to improve swimming technique to obtain gains in performance [10].  Figure1. Diagram of performance ex-tremes and quartiles.  The self-correlation values (table 1) ranged between moderate and high throughout the swimmer’s career. Stability becomes high (r = 0.644) from 14 years old until 18 years old.  However this increase reveals a "braking effect" in the improvement of swimmers performance starting at 16 years old. This may be associated with: (i) a maximal level of external training  reached by the swimmers, which is more difficult to overcome;  18171615141312170160150140130120110100

Longitudinal assessment of swimming performance in the 200 m freestyle event

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Longitudinal assessment of swimming performance in the 200 m freestyle event

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