MOVEMENT VARIABLES IMPORTANT FOR EFFECTIVENESS AND PERFORMANCE IN BREASTSTROKE

António Silva¹, Veronique Colman², Bart Soons², Francisco Alves³, Ulrik Persyn².

¹Sports Science Department, University of Vila Real, Portugal. ²FLOK-Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. ³Faculty of Human Movement, Lisbon, Portugal.

The purpose of this study is to improve diagnosing and advising breaststroke swimmers, based on a movement analysis and a statistical analysis of the two sexes apart. A reference population of 62 international level breaststroke swimmers (37 women and 25 men), from the period after the rule change in 1987, was available. A series of time-space variables was found to be not only relevant for effectiveness (for less velocity variation of the center of mass of the body) but also for swimming performance.