The Science of Sport: Swimming E-Book

Alexander Marinof

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The Science of Sport - Swimming is a complete guide for swimming training through the application of physiological, biomechanical, psychological, strength and conditioning, nutritional and injury management methods that can be used to optimize performance. Practical examples are included on the components of swimming conditioning, technical and mental training, and how they relate to the various swimming speciality events. The text provides details on mental and strength conditioning training exercises and racing day preparation methods for various abilities, including speciality swimmers who seek performance improvement constantly. The book includes contributions from leading coaches and sport scientists, sport psychologists, sports medical practitioners and Olympic, world and national champion swimmers.

Leseprobe

Alexander Marinof and Dr John Coumbe-Lilley

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2016 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

© Alexander Marinof 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 217 5

Illustration acknowledgements

Figures: Numarta designs

Biomechanics photos: Stefano Nurra

Swimming photos: Giuseppe Garafolo/Adn swim project, Alexandra Bovell,

Head sport GmbH, Mathieu Lesage

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I Primary Performance Training Mechanisms

1    Swimming History and Sport Science

2    Swimming Physiology

3    Swimming Biomechanics, Skills and Technique

4    Performance Testing and Analysis

5    Designing the Swimming Training Plan

6    Strength and Conditioning for Swimming

Part II Mental Training and Performance

7    Competitive Mindset

8    Performance Profiling (PP) for Competition

9    Mental Skills Training (MST) for Performance

10  Periodization and Mental Preparation

Part III Auxiliary Training Mechanisms

11  Nutrition, Hydration and Supplementation

12  Swimming Injuries, Recovery Methods and Sports Medicine

Part IV Case Studies

13  How a Champion Does it

References

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank:

My wonderful wife, Marta Solano Marinova, for her support all this year while I have been writing this book.

Dr John Coumbe-Lilley for his mentoring the past fourteen years and his contribution to the writing of this book.

The Olympic coach, Andrea Di Nino, whom I had the pleasure to work with at the ADN swim project, for all the material provided for this book and his valuable advice and recommendations on performance training optimization and management.

George Bovell for his contribution in writing Chapter 13, for sharing his ideas on performance training optimization, and allowing me the opportunity to work with him in all training aspects.

Stefano Nurra for the biomechanical images provided for Chapter 3 and for the recommendations on swimming technique and biomechanical principles application.

Clive Lathey for his mentoring in terms of sports injury management and for his recommendations on injury rehabilitation regime applications that were used in Chapter 12.

Vicenzo Iodice for his recommendations on postural correction techniques and breath training principles application.

My friend and business partner at Kineticbody Training and Health, Mark Staiger, for the endless times spent together discussing swimming and strength and conditioning training.

The swimmers Lewis Clifford-Stephenson (United Kingdom), François Heersbrandt (Belgium), Andrey Govorov (Ukraine), Ross Dibblin (United Kingdom), Jasper Van Mierlo (Netherlands), Oleg Tikhobaev (Russia), Yevgeny Lagunov (Russia), Kristian Gkolomeev (Greece), Shinri Shioura (Japan), Alice Mizzau (Italy), Gerda Pak (Estonia) and Carmella Kitching (France) for their hard work the past years and for the great times that we spent together.

Tatanka gym (Caserta), Stadio del Nuoto (Caserta), Putney Clinic (London).

Alexander Marinof

Thanks to all the hard-working athletes, coaches and peers who have taught me so much about how to train, compete and recover. Learning from you helped me write the sections in this book, which I dedicate to swimmers and coaches who love their sport and desire to improve their performance.

Dr John Coumbe-Lilley

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alexander Marinof, MSc

Alex is an exercise physiologist and founder of the Kineticbody Training and Health Company in London. Alex is a certified UKCC senior swimming and KTB strength conditioning coach and nutrition specialist. He graduated with a bachelor degree in exercise physiology from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 2005 and obtained a master’s degree in physiology, sport science and support from the University of Roehampton, London, in 2007. Upon retiring as an international swimmer eleven years ago, he gained extensive experience working as a swimming, strength and conditioning coach and exercise specialist in different parts of the world with regional, national, world and Olympic level athletes. Currently, he works at the ADN swim project in Italy as head strength and conditioning coach and assistant performance coach with a team of elite sprinters who seek 2016 Rio Olympics glory. He enjoys all forms of training and sports and is interested in exploring different cultures and learning foreign languages.

John Coumbe-Lilley, PhD, CC-AASP, CSCS

John is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he teaches and researches sport psychology. He is a certified consultant of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology and a member of the United States Olympic Committee, Sport Psychology Registry. John’s peers consider him a sport psychology practitioner and he has extensive experience working with individual and team environments competing in extended events at national, world and Olympic levels of competition. He enjoys boxing and rowing training and participating in triathlons and soccer.

George Bovell

George is a professional swimmer and intends to compete in a record fifth Olympiad. He is an Olympic bronze medallist and and former world record holder from Trinidad and Tobago. He is also a two-time World Championships bronze medallist, a four-time Olympian and is the Caribbean region’s most successful swimmer. He is also respected for his voluntary giving back initiatives and is known for organizing and conducting the annual George Bovell dive in free swim clinics. These are free for the youth of Trinidad and Tobago, who enjoy the privilege of being coached and mentored by renowned Olympic-medallist swimmers from around the world. George is also the writer of a popular inspirational newspaper column in the Trinidad Guardian entitled ‘Reflections Off The Water’. In addition to being a swimmer, George is also a renowned free diving specialist and enjoys underwater wildlife videography and spear fishing.

CONTRIBUTORS

Andrea Di Nino: Performance Olympic coach

Andrea is an Italian Olympic coach, and is the head coach and performance director of the renowned ADN swim project in Caserta, Italy. Andrea is known worldwide for his innovative sprint training and management methods. He was head coach for Trinidad and Tobago at the 2004 Athens Olympics and coach for Russia at the 2012 London Olympics. He was coach of the year in Russia for 2012 and during his career coached swimmers to two Olympic medals, five world records, four world championships and twenty-eight European championships medals. During his career he coached Olympic medallist Yevgeny Korotyshkin, Sergey Fesikov, world champion Milorad Cavic, world medallist Andrey Govorov and commonwealth champion Jason Dunford.

Stefano Nurra: Performance coach and biomechanical expert

Stefano is an Italian performance coach who works currently for the Turkish swimming federation as the head performance director of the Bursa intensive training centre. He is an internationally recognized swimming biomechanics expert and his work involves engineering biomechanical tools that can improve swimming performance, developing swimming-specific software for smart applications (Swimlab) and practical swimming biomechanics consultation for various swimming federations and clubs worldwide.

Clive Lathey DO MSc (Sports Medicine)

Clive is the founder and director of the Putney Clinic of Physical Therapy in London. He graduated from the British School of Osteopathy in 1983 and after working in Australia, New Zealand and Spain has spent the last twenty-five years working in London with both private and NHS clients. He was contracted to top golfer Colin Montgomerie for five years, travelling with him to events such as the Ryder Cup and US Masters tournament in Augusta, USA. In 2009–10 Clive worked alongside the medical team at Liverpool Football Club treating the first team players. He treats professional tennis players and Olympic athletes regularly.

INTRODUCTION

In the past fifteen years there has been an increase in the number of swimmers participating in competitions at all levels, and there is a significant demand for professional coaches who can offer high-level training. Additionally, swimming coaching has been recognized as a full-time profession and in the past two decades coaches have been using various scientific training principles that can stimulate and optimize performance. By reading this book, coaches, sports scientists, swimmers, students and swimming fanatics will notice that the requirements placed on swimming coaching are very demanding, and that a number of strategies and planning settings must be conducted on a daily basis. Consequently, swimming training is carried out properly and swimming performance is optimized.

This science of swimming book has been written with the contribution of leading coaches and sport scientists, sport psychologists, sports medical practitioners and Olympic, world and national champion swimmers, who were all able to disclose their philosophies while working in conjunction with the authors. The book is based on the scientific knowledge and the practical experience of the authors, which combines various coaching philosophies from the eastern and western world training cultures. The book is intended to provide a complete guide for swimming training through the application of physiological, biomechanical, psychological, strength and conditioning, nutritional and injury management methods that can be used to optimize performance. Furthermore, practical examples are included on the components of swimming conditioning, technical and mental training, and how they relate to the various swimming speciality events. The text provides details on mental and strength conditioning training exercises and racing day preparation methods for various abilities, including speciality swimmers who seek performance improvement constantly.

PART IPRIMARY PERFORMANCE TRAINING MECHANISMS

CHAPTER 1

SWIMMING HISTORY AND SPORT SCIENCE

by Alexander Marinof

Swimming has been recognized as a leisure activity since ancient times; first the Egyptians and then the Greeks and the Romans used it on a daily basis as a survival skill as well as an exercise activity. The first modern society that developed swimming as a sport was the United Kingdom and by the nineteenth century swimming competitions were held in London in six man-made pools. Consequently, as the sport grew in popularity more pools were built in Britain and in 1880 the Amateur British Swimming Association was founded.

In 1896 Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympics in Athens and swimming was one of the main events included in the Olympic programme. However, the swimming events at that time differed slightly from the present day. In addition, women were not able to participate in any of the swimming disciplines due to the false belief held in the Victorian era that women were incapable of participation in competitive sports.

During the 1896 Games, the swimming programme included just four events using only one stroke (freestyle). Since then swimming has evolved and presently there are thirtytwo swimming events (sixteen each for men and women) registered in the programme and recognized officially by the Olympic committee. It is worth mentioning there are forty official individual swimming events that are recognized by the International Swimming Federation (Fédération Internationale de Natation or FINA); however, some of them are not part of the Olympic programme. There are also open-water swimming events that are not held in a typical pool environment. These events take place in open-water (lake, river, sea) environments. There are 5km, 10km and 25km for men and women, although only the 10km event is included in the Olympic programme.

The majority of competitive swimming events (excluding open water) are held in a controlled competition environment. The competitive swimming pools meet certain criteria and there are 50m (long course) such as those used in the Olympic Games or 25m or yards (short course). The 25yd meets are popular among American colleges and specific training principles, rules and regulations are applied by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for these competitions. In addition, 25m pools are mainly used in the rest of the world and there is a 25m short-course swimming season that usually takes place during the winter competitive swimming period. In some cases, 33m pools are used for junior competitions and training; however the results and times obtained during these are termed unofficial by most of the swimming governing bodies worldwide. Competition pools have starting blocks from which the competitor can perform a dive-in start, and the majority of competition pools also have touch receptive pads behind each lane that electronically record the time of each competitor.

Subsequent to different techniques and rule changes, in the past century four major strokes have been established. These are butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle and they have been relatively consistent with only minor improvements and technical additions during the past forty years. The majority of the swimming competitive events include only one stroke, however the individual medley events include all four in a certain order, over equal different distances of 50 and 100m. Nowadays, five stroke disciplines are included in the competitive Olympic programme (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle and individual medley) with different world records held in each.

In the last twenty-five years a revolutionary method of swimming has been added to some events called the dolphin kick. This is used frequently by swimmers of various ability levels for momentum gain and power speed maintenance from the start and during competitive turns. During the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, the American swimmer David Berkoff swam most of the 100m backstroke race underwater using a supreme dolphin kick technique and broke the world record for the distance during the preliminaries. In the final of the same event, Daichi Suzuki from Japan implemented the same technique and won the event by a small margin ahead of Berkoff. In addition, during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Denis Pankratov from Russia completed most of the 100m butterfly impressively underwater, breaking the world record in the event.

Since then, FINA has imposed the 15m rule for dolphin kick regulation, from each start and turn for all the events besides the breaststroke. In the latter the dolphin kick is limited only to one undulation per pull down of the start and the turn of the event. During the last three Olympiads and World championships several swimmers including Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Florent Manaudou, Misty Hyman, Natalie Coughlin and Sarah Sjöström have demonstrated superiority over their other counterparts by maximizing their swimming speed using a fine dolphin kick technique during each start and turn. In the last fifteen years the vast majority of elite coaches and sports scientists involved in swimming have termed the dolphin kick the fifth competitive stroke. Consequently, during that time the majority of competitive coaches and swimmers have placed significant emphasis during daily training routines on specific dolphin-kick technique application.

Fig. 1 Butterfly swimmer.

Swimmers currently continue to break world records more frequently with greater margins than in any other sport. The new world records are not a result of larger volumes of training work but through a better understanding of the primary components (biomechanical, physiological, and psychological) of swimming training, which are the fundamental determinants for performance improvement. Consequently, there is a belief among the scientific and coaching community that greater improvements can be expected as the competitive swimming training principles continue to progress at an exponential rate.

SPORT SCIENCE AND BASIC TRAINING PRINCIPLES

In the past three decades numerous endurance events (e.g. running, biking, rowing and swimming) have been analysed by sports scientists. In addition, several laboratory and field tests have been used in order to examine athletic performance demands. However, swimming is the only sport that takes place in an environment that is completely distant to man’s natural environment and there are several variables that characterize swimming as a unique sport. For instance, due to the fact that swimming has a unique athletic environment and specific physiological and biomechanical demands, there is a limit to how much it can be analysed in a laboratory environment. Therefore, this environmental specificity has caused several problems for the vast majority of sport scientists affiliated to the sport, leading them to favour field testing for competitive analysis.

Fig. 2 Olympic size pool, used for field testing.

Competitive swimmers may cover 10,000 to 20,000m a day, six to seven days per week; swimming events range from 50m (lasting 21–26sec) to 1,500m (lasting 15–17min). This extensive variety of events, the different physiological and biomechanical demands of each stroke and the distances that swimmers cover, make swimming coaching scientifically demanding to a point that several physiological and biomechanical methods and parameters can be exploited in the water during training and competition for maximal performance reach. This leads the sports science community involved in swimming to use a multidisciplinary approach for understanding sport specifics. For instance, swimming technique is strongly related to both mechanical and metabolic loads that swimmers elicit at certain velocities; hence rather than looking at any of these aspects separately, the major assignment of any swimming coach and sports scientist is to reveal the relationships between metabolic, morphological, physiological mechanical and co-ordinative aspects of the sport and establish a connection between them for optimal performance enhancement.

Fig. 3a, b Laboratory testing.

THE TRAINING PRINCIPLES

In the last fifteen years the competitive training principles have been optimized extensively, leading to a belief among the elite coaching and sports science community that several world records will be broken within the next five years. Through the practical experience of speaking to and working with elite athletes, coaches and sport scientists during the past decade, it can be stated that swimming training is partially a science and partially a form of art, and there are several ways to maximize and optimize performance. For example, when the science stops and cannot enhance further performance improvement the coaches should trigger their creative side and try to spice up each individual workout, planning and creating an optimal programme in a similar way that an artist creates a masterpiece.

‘Coaching is one of the few things that is as much of an art as it is a science. There are varying degrees in the spectrum of coaching, from so-called coaches that merely supervise physical activity, to the few who profoundly change lives for the better. We all know of coaches in various sports who seem to consistently win championships and produce great athletes year after year. What distinguishes them from the rest and what are they doing differently?’

George Bovell

An elite coach should have a scientific knowledge, great organization and efficiency skills, and have a creative style. Coaches must predominantly gain athletes’ trust and respect and, in addition, they should establish an efficient link between all the supporting staff (assistant coach, strength and conditioning coach, physical therapist, sports doctor, sports psychologist, nutritionist, massage therapist) that will allow them to maximize their coaching potential and optimize the individual abilities of the swimmers affiliated to the training programme.

Fig. 4 Butterfly swimmer.

Fig. 5 Coach on duty.

On the other hand, in order for the desired optimal performance to be achieved, the swimmers should engage with their coach and the supporting personnel to follow an extended process that can take several years. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts during the long-term elite swimmer development process. Swimmers should understand that several complex components including training, recovery, planning and coping with busy daily schedules will be overcome only with cooperation between all parties involved in the programme.

In the quest for higher performance achievement, a series of training intensities, motives, principles and skills should be practised during a long-term process that can last up to 10–12 years and include about 10,000 practising hours. Normally, swimmers must complete different training phases through the duration of the swimming season, which can last several weeks and months. It should be underlined that the majority of Olympic, international and national level medallists top up their daily routines with several hours of swimming and strength and conditioning training that occasionally can lead to optimal performance.

Fig. 6 Long-term athlete development stages.

Fig. 7 International level sprinter following the completion of the annual season.

SWIMMING TRAINING FUNDAMENTALS

Swimming training can be considered as the activation of certain muscle, joints and ligaments – vital organs in regard to a specific technique and skill. Fundamental training mechanisms are considered to be the swimmer’s overall cardiovascular and musculoskeletal conditioning and the psychological and mental ability that can affect competition performance. In addition, there are several factors such as nutrition, hydration, supplementation, injury prevention and recovery methods that can enhance daily training regimes; however, these are not termed primary training components. The training fundamentals have been recognized worldwide by elite coaches and sport scientists, and have come to be used for swimming training guidance that is intended to lead to higher competitive performances.

CHAPTER 2

SWIMMING PHYSIOLOGY

by Alexander Marinof

Understanding swimming physiology can support and optimize the basic mechanisms of training and be a key factor for performance success. Before describing the different physiological components and their possible effects on swimming performance it must be explained how the swimmer’s body responds physiologically during training and competition.

Swimming takes place in an environment that presents different gravitational and resistive forces, respiratory conditions and thermal stress compared to air. Moreover, swimming is performed in a lying position that alters the gravitational effects on circulation. The energy cost of propulsion in swimming is high but a considerable reduction occurs at a given velocity as a result of regular training. There is a significant difference of (8–10 per cent) of oxygen uptake during maximal swimming in comparison to running, possibly due to the fact that swimmers experience respiratory, central circulatory and peripheral/muscular limitations for oxygen transport and utilization during training and competition. Furthermore, local factors such as peripheral circulation, capillary density, perfusion pressure and the metabolic capacity of active muscles are important determinants of the power outputs in terms of swimming-specific movements. Moreover, the mean arterial pressure has the tendency to be higher during maximal swimming compared with other endurance sports. Usually the maximal ventilation rate is lower in swimming compared with running; although when ventilation/litres consumed during maximal swimming effort is analysed in comparison with running, normal ventilation is usually observed rather than hyperventilation.