engleski

Relations between legs-only and full stroke swimming in various swimming styles

Some researchers consider that the role of legs in swimming is negligible, especially in front crawl. Most of the research has concentrated on front crawl or breaststroke styles. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between swimming speed achieved using full stroke, and swimming speed achieved using legs-only, in four different swimming styles. Methods Sixty-eight well conditioned male swimmers aged 16-18 participated in this study. The subject swam “all-out” 25 m and 100 m distances four times, using each of the four styles (crawl, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly) starting from the water. Each of the swimming styles was performed on the same day (25 m + 100 m) with a 15 minutes rest period. Two days later, the procedure continued by legs-only swimming, all styles on the same day with 15 minute rest periods. Results The statistical analyses were performed using Statistica 10.0. The mean full stroke swimming times (in seconds) were: 100 m crawl = 59.13±3.46, 100 m backstroke = 69.13± 6.04, 100 m breastroke = 77.65±5.27 and 100 m butterfly = 69.68±6.71. Mean times for 25 meter swims were: 25 m crawl = 13.54±0.60, 25 m backstroke = 15.92±1.11, 25 m breaststroke = 18.49±1.23 and 25 m butterfly = 15.27±1.17. Times for legs-only swimming were: 25 m crawl = 19.50±1.88, 25 m backstroke = 9.99±2.66, 25 m breaststroke = 22.28±1.49 and 25 m butterfly = 20.27±2.47. The results indicated that correlation coefficients between legs-only swimming times and full stroke swimming times across various distances are similar. When comparing different styles it can be noticed that front crawl has the lowest correlation coefficients (0.40 and 0.38 for 100 meters and 25 meters, respectively). The highest correlation coefficient was observed for breaststroke (0.55 and 0.71 for 100 meters and 25 meters, respectively). For butterfly style, the correlation coefficients were 0.59 and 0.54 for 100 meters and 25 meters, respectively) and for backstroke 0.47 and 0.46 for 100 meters and 25 meters, respectively. The results showed that legs-only swimming may be a good indicator of full stroke swimming speed for butterfly and breaststroke styles. In front crawl and backstroke, this influence is less pronounced. Relationships in different swimming distances are similar

swimming ; legs-only ; stroke

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