Evaluation of adolescent swimmers through a 30-s tethered test.
Our purpose was to demonstrate that 30-s tethered swimming test can be a useful tool to estimate swimming performance in short distance freestyle events. Thirteen high level adolescent swimmers (7 male and 6 female of 16.6 ± 1.0 and 15.8 ± 0.8 years old) performed a 30-s maximum effort in front crawl tethered swimming. Afterward, subjects completed 50-m and 100-m freestyle events at the National Championships. Both maximum and mean force values obtained in the tethered test related directly with 50-m (r = .78 and r = .72, p < .01, respectively) and 100-m freestyle velocities (r = .63 and r = .61, p < .05, respectively). Fatigue index did not present a significant relationship with any of the studied performance variables. However, a proposed parameter--fatigue slope-correlated with 50-m (r = -.75, p < .01), 100-m performances (r = -.57, p < .05) and with r[La-] (r = -.90, p < .01). It is concluded that, for adolescent swimmers, values obtained from 30-s tethered test are well related with swimming performance in sprint events. In addition, fatigue slope seems to be more associated with swimming performance in short distance events than fatigue index.
Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Research Center for Human Movement Sciences, Leiria, Portugal.
Pedro G
PG
Morouço
Jõao P
JP
Vilas-Boas
Ricardo J
RJ
Fernandes
D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D015444:Exercise; D005080:Exercise Test / Q000379:methods*; D017079:Exercise Tolerance / Q000502:physiology; D005221:Fatigue; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013550:Swimming / Q000502:physiology*