What is the Best Swimming Relay Start Technique?

The relay exchange is a critical component of relays. Subjectively, you can watch a great relay exchange and watch the superior relay start make a significant improvement over their competitors. Yet, the ideal swimming relay start technique has garnered minimal research.

Research on Swimming Relay Start Technique

Similar to swimming start, many in the swimming community associate a lower changeover time with a successful swimming relay start.

Saavedra et al. (2014) researched the relationship between changeover times and the corresponding relay race times for 13 years from international competitions (yes, 13 years) and concluded that changeover time was a determining factor for the overall race performance. However, Fischer et al. (2017) found that:

maximizing horizontal peak force rather than minimizing changeover time improved relay start performance

Fischer et al., 2019

History of Swimming Relay Start Technique

Over time, block maneuvers for swimming relay start technique has changed dramatically.

• Parallel start with circular arm swing
• Track start
• Single-step start
• Double-step start
• Step over start [as depicted above, if someone has a name for this, please put in comments]

Not all of these swimming relay start techniques have been researched, but of the research previously done, there have been no significant differences between relay starting styles.

However, a higher horizontal take-off velocity was detected in the double step technique by McLean et al. (2000). In contrast, in a study conducted by Takeda et al. (2010), no significant differences were found across different swimming relay start techniques in horizontal take-off velocity or in take-off angle.

At this point, it remains unclear (from the current body of literature) in several ways which swimming relay start technique competitive swimmers should employ during relay races.

3 Flaws with Past Relay Start Research

1. Lack of research: The most regarded research on swimming relay start technique doesn’t include (Gambrel et al., 1991; McLean et al., 2000; Takeda et al., 2010) date on the Omega OSB11 starting block, which was released in 2008 and which provides further advantages for swimmers.
2. Lack of Key Parameters: There is still debate about what are the key parameters to research for the relay start, making it unclear if previous research has the key parameters (Fischer & Kibele, 2016; Tor et al., 2015).
3. Not Measuring Underwater Phase: No previous research has examined the effect of the different relay start techniques on the underwater phase, arguably the most important phase.

Parallel, Separated, or One-Step…

A recent study (Qiu 2020) compared three different swimming relay start techniques in “eleven international youth swimmers (5 males and 6 females) 16.0 ± 1.29 yrs, height 1.67 ± 0.05 m, body mass 56.4 ± 6.88 kg, and FINA points 762 ± 31.03, were recruited as participants in the current study. All swimmers were national champions, belonged to the National Training Centre Squad and eight of them participated in the 2016 and 2017 European Junior Swimming Championships.”

The three styles used were:

1. Parallel feet start
2. Separated feet start
3. One-step start

After a standardized warm-up, the athletes performed a sprint 25-m for each of these swimming relay start techniques in a random order.

So, Which Swimming Relay Start Technique is Best?

Like most items in research, there was no statistically significant differences in time to 5-, 10-, 15-m or horizontal take-off velocity, but

an observed trend for the one-step start to be superior to the non-step techniques.

Qiu et. al., 2020

Despite the above findings, here were the differences 6 main findings:

1. When performing a one-step technique start, swimmers spent a longer preparation time with smaller time contribution of changeover time compared to the parallel feet technique. Changeover times varied between 0.20 seconds and 0.30 seconds – in line with previous data by Fischer et al. (2019) during international swimming competitions – being shorter in the one-step start compared to the parallel feet technique. If the one-step technique reduced changeover time, the step-over technique likely decreases this time even more and may be a reason for disqualifications.
2. As we’d expect, the swimmers’ center of mass presented closer distance to the starting wall and lower height in the initial position when employing the parallel feet technique than the other techniques.
3. Greater take-off distance was observed in the parallel versus the separated feet technique.
4. Swimmers showed a greater take off height in the separated feet technique compared to the remaining techniques.
5. For the one-step technique, the center of mass of the initial position was 0.1 m further back than in the other techniques, which is in line with the longer preparation times employed by swimmers.
6. One last note the author’s of this study stated:
   1. “Finally, but not less importantly, times to 5 m, 10 m and 15 m – slightly slower than previous relay start times by male collegiate swimmers (McLean et al., 2000) – did not show statistical effects between different relay start techniques, despite a tendency where swimmers employing the one-step technique could obtain shorter times than in no-step start techniques. These results are in line with the absence of statistical differences observed in the take-off velocities, and suggest that differences between relay start techniques (when equally trained) seem to rely more on the swimmers’ posture than on the center of mass linear kinematics.”

Swimming Relay Start Technique Conclusion

Based off the results of this study, there is no significant difference in swimming time or horizontal velocity in relay start techniques. However, there is a trend towards the step relay start and previous data by McLean et al. (2000) which indicated the relay step-up did not result in a significantly faster 10 m start times, and that the differences between no-step and step starts was close to 0.09 seconds.

Clearly, more research is needed and information regarding the preferred style of a relay start, but overall it seems the step-up style results in greater horizontal velocity and faster times, it just isn’t significant. This is in alignment with expert observation, as most elite swimmers used this style of relay start.

References:

1. Fischer, S. (2017). Evaluating relay starts in swimming. In S. Fischer &
   A. Kibele (Eds.), Contemporary swim start research: Conference book:
   Young experts’ workshop on swim start research 2015 (pp. 50–58).
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2. Fischer, S., Braun, C., & Kibele, A. (2017). Learning relay start strategies in
   swimming: What feedback is best? European Journal of Sport Science, 17
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3. Fischer, S., Braun, C., & Kibele, A. (2019). Jason Lezak again and again-linear
   mixed modelling analysis of change–over times in relay swimming races.
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5. Gambrel, D. W., Blanke, D., Thigpen, K., & Mellion, M. B. (1991).
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6. McLean, S. P., Holthe, M. J., Vint, P. F., Beckett, K. D., & Hinrichs, R. N. (2000). Addition of an approach to a swimming relay start. Journal of Applied Biomechanics, 16(4), 342–355. https://doi.org/10.1123/jab.16.4.342
7. Qiu X, Veiga S, Calvo AL, Kibele A, Navarro E. A Kinematics Comparison of Different Swimming Relay Start Techniques. J Sports Sci. 2020 Dec 18:1-9. doi: 10.1080/02640414.2020.1860296. Online ahead of print.
8. Saavedra, J. M., García-Hermoso, A., Escalante, Y., Dominguez, A. M.,
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9. Takeda, T., Sakai, S., Takagi, H., Okuno, K., & Tsubakimoto, S. (2017). Contribution of hand and foot force to take-off velocity for the kick-start in competitive swimming. Journal of Sports Sciences, 35(6), 565–571. https://doi.org/10. 1080/02640414.2016.1180417
10. Takeda, T., Takagi, H., & Tsubakimoto, S. (2010). Comparison among three types of relay starts in competitive swimming [Paper presentation]. The XIth International Symposium for Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming, Oslo, Norway.
11. Takeda, T., Takagi, H., & Tsubakimoto, S. (2012). Effect of inclination and
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12. Tor, E., Pease, D., & Ball, K. (2014). Characteristics of an elite swimming start [Paper presentation]. The Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming
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14. Veiga, S., Cala, A., Frutos, P. G., & Navarro, E. (2014). Comparison of starts and turns of national and regional level swimmers by individualized distance measurements. Sports Biomechanics, 13(3), 285–295. https://doi.org/10. 1080/14763141.2014.910265
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16. Veiga, S., Roig, A., & Gómez-Ruano, M. A. (2016). Do faster swimmers spend longer underwater than slower swimmers at World Championships? European Journal of Sport Science, 16(8), 919–926. https://doi.org/10. 1080/17461391.2016.1153727