TECHNICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES OF SWIMMING CRAWLSTROKE USING HAND PADDLES, FINS AND SNORKEL IN SWIMMING FLUME: A PILOT STUDY

Abstract

We evaluated the effect on front-crawl during a 5 minutes effort in a swimming flume, at a speed 95% of 400m wearing swimming paddles, fins or frontal snorkel. It was evaluated measuring changes on stroke frequency, stroke length, ERP, lactate concentration and pulse rate post-effort. An one-way repeated measures ANOVA showed the stroke frequency was significantly affected F(2.3, 27.6) = 20.69 p<0.01, the stroke length F(2.67, 32.23) = 21.56 p<0.01, the RPE F(25.5, 36.0) = 14.87 p<0.01, the lactate on 3’ F(2.3, 27.8) = 11.30 p<0.01, the lactate on 5’ F(2.8, 33.5) = 12.80 p<0.01 and the pulse rate F(3, 30) = 4.73 p<0.01. The use of swimming paddles and fins increases the stroke efficiency and reduce the load of the exercise while the use of snorkel did not differ from normal crawl-stroke.