Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Competition”
Watching any high-level swim meet and the casual observer would assume the Olympic female swimmers pace properly. However, many elite coaches will discuss how swimmer’s didn’t “swim their own race” or we’ve all heard coaches say “they went out too slow”. With all the hours of training and swimming do Olympic female swimmers pace properly? This sounds absurd at the …
Recovery and warm-up is a significant component of any swimming race. Many realize different race distances stress the body differently, yet many perform the same warm-down no matter the race difference. During competitions, swimmers often perform multiple races over various periods of length. some swimmers will compete 4 – 6 times over a course of 6 hours. Others will race …
Something unique for our readers in this week’s interview. What follows are notes from a phone interview I conducted with Dr. Jan Prins, Ph.D. Dr. Prins is the Director of the Aquatic Research Laboratory at the University of Hawaii at Manoa along with Founder and Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Swimming Research. He is one of the contributors to The Swim …
The burden of shoulder problems highlights the need for injury prevention strategies. Identifying risk factors and developing strategies to prevent injury, based on these risk factors, are key components for preventing injuries in sports. This reflects the second and third step in the ‘sequence of prevention’ and ‘translating research into injury prevention practice’ models. Overall, 4,740 studies were excluded from …
Take Home Points on 3 Things you Didn’t Know About Ultra-Endurance Swimming Ultra-endurance swimming often doesn’t result in maximal fatigue, cause hunger, or alter swimming hand path.This form of training isn’t as negative as some suggest on swimming skill. Many associate ultra-endurance swimming with pain and fatigue. However, we know little on the subject, despite it’s growing popularity. Now, many swimmers have …
Take home points1) Raised freestyle head position is one of the most common stroke flaws in freestyle2) Corrective strategies must be individualized to each swimmer3) Avenues for change include biomechanical, cognitive, and environmental Raised freestyle head position in freestyle is one of the most common stroke flaws in the pool at all levels of the sport. In the literature this …
We all have various cues to communicate with athletes. Everyone’s cues vary with style, audience, and available tools such as video. Clarity is our goal with athlete communications. “Feel” does not always equate to “real”, which is why video is so powerful. Regardless of whether you use video or not, what matters most is how the athlete internalizes cues. As …
This is an interview with Dr. Lucas Wymore. Dr. Wymore recently published: Shoulder Functional Performance Status of National Collegiate Athletic Association Swimmers: Baseline Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic Scores. This interview discusses this research article, but don’t forget to look at Dr. Wymore’s other study: No correlation between stroke specialty and rate of shoulder pain in NCAA men swimmers. For more on Swimmer’s Shoulder checkout Swimmer’s Shoulder …
The shoulder is the primary site of injury in swimmers, but the low back is the second most commonly injured site. In fact, ~8% of those competing at a 2001 International competition experienced low back pain. Kaneoka (2007) noted thirty-eight (68%) elite swimmers and 11 (29%) controls had degenerated discs at various levels. Disc level L5-S1 was more frequently degenerated …
Overreaching is the close cousin of overtraining We’ve previously discussed in detail the negative effects of overtraining. Also, anyone in sports understands the importance of training hard and pushing oneself, ideally for the super-compensation effect. However, the effect balance of swimming training and rest for maximizing overreaching, while minimizing overtraining is extremely difficult. In swimming, many teams perform macrocycles of approximately 3 months, …