INFLUENCE OF DEEP WATER RUN TRAINING SUPPLEMENT ON THE MAINTENANCE OF AEROBIC PERFORMANCE AND KINEMATICS OF MIDDLE-DISTANCE RUNNERS

Leonardo Alexandre Peyré Tartaruga, Marcelo Coertjens, Marcus Peikriszwilli Tartaruga, Gabriela Lovis Black, Alvaro Reischak Oliveira, Leonardo Rossato Ribas, Luiz Fernando Martins Kruel.

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether trained competitive runners could maintain on-land running performance and kinematics using 8 wk of deep water run supplement training (30%) instead of just on-land training. Eight trained male runners (VO^2MAX: 53,3 ± 4.1 ml. Kg^-1. min^-1) were assigned to one of the two groups, on-land run just (R) or water run supplement (WR). Following 8 wk of workouts, no significant intra- or intergroup differences were observed for treadmill VO^2MAX, running economy, horizontal velocity, stride length, stride rate, time of support, time of flight and segmental body positions. It was concluded that deep water running may serve as an effective training supplement to land-based running for the maintenance of aerobic performance and running kinematics for up 8 wk in trained middle-distance runners.