Swimming demands physical fitness, skill, and mental fortitude, with athletes training for hours daily to better their performance. But what happens when they take a break from training? Detraining is the loss of previously attained adaptations due to decreased or no training (Mujika & Padilla, 2000).
Commonly a four-week hiatus is allowed for top swimmers to go through detraining-related studies (Mujika & Padilla, 2000). Detraining can lead to a decrease in swimming performance, energetics and kinematics.
A research study by Zacca et al. (2019) looked at 400-m front crawl performance related to four weeks of reduced training in age-group swimmers (14-15 years old). It was found that performance dropped by 3.8%, mainly as a result of decreased stroke rate, an uptick in peak blood lactate concentrations, and limited non-swimming specific physical activities during the off-season. The authors suggested that age group swimmers remain physically active while on their break time. Other studies have found similar results with elite male athletes with 200 yards freestyle time increasing by 3.6% after 4 weeks without training (Costill et al., 1985) and VO2 max declining by 8% after reducing training to just one session per week (Neufer et al., 1987).
Even body composition can be impacted: Almeras et al.’s study revealed that elite female swimmers gained 4.8 kg of body weight and 4 kg of body fat after two months without any training period. This type of change may not be ideal for good swimming performance as increased fat can cause drag and effects the buoyancy in the water.
To summarize, detraining has negative impacts on swimming performance, energetics and kinematics and should be avoided or at least minimized whilst keeping some level of physical activity during off-season times.
References
- Almeras N., Lemieux S., Bouchard C., Tremblay A., Despres
J.P., Theriault G., Allard C., Leblanc C., & J-P Thibault M.C. (1997).
Impact of a 2-month swimming cessation on diet and body composition in elite
female swimmers. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise , 29(5), S113.
- Costill D.L., Thomas R., Robergs R.A., Pascoe D., Lambert
C., Barr S., & Fink W.J. (1985). Adaptations to swimming training:
influence of training volume. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise ,
17(3), 371-377.
- Mujika I., & Padilla S. (2000). Detraining: loss of
training-induced physiological and performance adaptations. Part I: short term
insufficient training stimulus. Sports Medicine , 30(2), 79-87.
- Neufer P.D., Costill D.L., Fielding R.A., Flynn M.G.,
& Kirwan J.P. (1987). Effect of reduced training on muscular strength and
endurance in competitive swimmers. Medicine & Science in Sports &
Exercise , 19(5), 486-490.
- Zacca R., Toubekis A., Freitas L., Silva A.F., Azevedo R.,
Vilas-Boas J.P., Pyne D.B., Castro F.A.D.S., & Fernandes R.J. (2019).
Effects of detraining in age-group swimmers performance, energetics and
kinematics. Journal of Sports Sciences , 37(13), 1490-1498.
No comments:
Post a Comment