Yesterday, I looked at whether swimmers have larger lung capacities than other athletes. That was a relatively straightforward idea to get warmed-up with so let’s tackle the tricky area of using assistance or resistance to aid sprint swimming.
Swimmer breathing (Photo courtesy of the gifted cmaccubbin)
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What’s the study?
It’s called Assisted and resisted sprint training in swimming, by Girold, Calmels, Maurin, Milhau and Chatard, in Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2006.
The purpose of the study was to find out whether the resisted-sprint in “over-strength” or the assisted-sprint in “over-speed” could be efficient training methods to increase 100m front crawl performance.
The researchers also measured elbow flexion and extension strength and correlated it against the ability of the swimmers in the 100m freestyle sprint.
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What on earth?
Don’t be alarmed! Let’s define those terms before we go any further.
The term “over-strength” simply refers to adding resistance to the swimmer while they are swimming. So in this study, elastic bands tied from the back of the swimmer to the wall to slow them down. This makes the swimmer work harder to go at the same speed.
The term “over-speed” simply refers to taking resistance off the swimmer while they are swimming. In this study, elastic bands were used to speed them up. The bands were attached to the front of the swimmer to the wall they were travelling towards in order to speed them up.
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Why bother with this?
Well, as the study explains, strength and speed are two major elements determining a sprint swimmer’s training programme. In fact, the study notes that in sprint swimming, physical strength is considered more important than technique to reach a high level of performance.
Surprising then, that so few amateur swimming programmes (at least in the UK) have any strength training built in as a matter of course.
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So how did they manage it practically?
The researchers divided the subjects in the study into three categories, “over-strength”, “over-speed” and the control, who continued doing standard swimming training work as before.
Over-strength - The researchers explain that the swimmers in the “over-strength” group swam six all-out 30s front crawl sprints with a 30s recovery period between each sprint (total duration six minutes). The “over-strength” swimmers were tethered to the starting platform using a piece of elastic attached to a belt. The elastic stretched over an average distance of 15 m and stopped the swimmers from going any further.
Over-speed - Swimmers in the “over-speed” group swam twelve 25m freestyle front crawl sprints. These swimmers were also attached to elastic in the same way except that the elastic was 8m long and attached to the point of arrival. As the swimmer approached the end of the length, an assistant on the poolside maintained the elastic as taut as possible to maintain the same force throughout the sprint. Between each sprint, the swimmer got out of the pool, walked back to the point of departure, and jumped into the water. This walk back was treated as the recovery period so the total duration was about the same as for the “over-strength” group.
Control - The control group swam six 50m all-out front crawl sprints, without any elastic, and with a 30s recovery period between sprints.
The researchers also measured the ability of the subjects to perform elbow flexion and extension exercises, both before and after the experiment.
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So what happened?
Strength variations
The researchers found that for the entire study population, 100m performance was well correlated with the strength of the elbow flexors and extensors under isometric and concentric conditions. In other words, the stronger swimmers were faster than the weaker swimmers over 100m.
The researchers also found that the ”over-strength” group improved the strength of the elbow flexors and extensors considerably in both concentric and isometric conditions. However, the ”over-speed” group only increased strength in the elbow flexors at one isometric measurement.
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Swimming performance variations
The researchers found that the ”over-strength” group improved their swimming performance weekly but that the ”over-speed” group improved their swimming performance only in the second and third weeks of the three week experiment. Moreover, the benefits shown in the 100m sprint occured in the second 50m but not in the first 50m. Both training method improvements also correlated with an increase in stroke rate in this second 50m. So it looks like speed-endurance is being trained here.
If you want the numbers, here are the average 100m times from before and after the 3-week experiment (remember this is blended average of male and female swimmers):
- Control – before 68.15s / after 68.35s
- Over-strength – before 67.43s / after 66.05s
- Over-speed – before 62.46s / after 61.9s
There was a time I would have killed for a 1.5s improvement in my 100m freestyle performance. To achieve it in just three weeks is remarkable.
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Conclusions
The researchers concluded that both “over-strength” and “over-speed” proved to be more efficient than the traditional training program. However, they note that the “over-strength” training program had a larger impact on muscle strength, swimming performance, and stroke technique than the “over-speed” programme.
It is possible, however, that the two training methods are not working by identical means. While stroke rate is increased and correlated with the improved swimming times in the second 50m of the 100m sprint, the strength improvements in the “over-strength” group were not replicated in the “over-speed” group. Therefore, I suspect that both training methods could be employed to good effect, perhaps with a time-bias towards “over-strength”.
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