title: Relationships between the front crawl stroke parameters of competitive unilateral arm amputee swimmers, with selected anthropometric characteristics.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships between swimming speed (SS), stroke length (SL), and stroke frequency (SF) for competitive single-arm amputee front crawl swimmers and assess their relationships with anthropometric characteristics. Thirteen highly trained swimmers (3 male, 10 female) were filmed underwater from a lateral view during seven increasingly faster 25-m front crawl trials. Increases in SS (above 75% of maximum SS) were achieved by a 5% increase in SF, which coincided with a 2% decrease in SL. At SSmax, interswimmer correlations showed that SF was significantly related to SS (r = .72; p < .01) whereas SL was not. Moderate but nonsignificant correlations suggested that faster swimmers did not necessarily use longer and slower strokes to swim at a common submaximal speed when compared with their slower counterparts. No correlations existed between SL and any anthropometric characteristics. Biacromial breadth, shoulder girth, and upper-arm length all significantly correlated with the SF used at SSmax. These findings imply that as a consequence of being deprived of an important propelling limb, at fast swimming speeds SF is more important than SL in influencing the performance outcome of these single-arm amputee swimmers.
authors.affiliation: School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Conor D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Osborough
authors.forename: Carl J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Payton
authors.forename: Daniel J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Daly
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000674:Amputees; D000886:Anthropometry / Q000379:methods; D001132:Arm / Q000502:physiology*; D049628:Body Size / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005684:Gait / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D005082:Physical Exertion / Q000502:physiology*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013550:Swimming / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis