Reliability of front-Crawl's force-time curve in a short duration protocol

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to analyze the reliability of biomechanical parameters of the front-Crawl's force-time curve in a 10-s protocol. Sixteen national competitive male swimmers (20.4 ± 4.0 years; 100-m best time: 53.68 ± 0.99 s) performed two 10-s maximal efforts in tethered swimming. Peak force, average force, impulse, rate of force development, stroke duration, time to peak force and minimum force were represented by the mean of eight consecutive strokes obtained in each trial. The paired student-t test was used to verify differences between trials for each biomechanical parameter. The significance level adopted was 5%. Relative reliability was tested by Pearson correlation coefficient and the consistency between trials by means of intraclass coefficient (CCI). The coefficient of variation was used to verify the absolute reliability. No significant differences between the trials to any biomechanical parameter were found. High CCI values and low CV values revealed the high internal consistency of the analyzed variables. It can be concluded that the biomechanical parameters regarding the tethered swimming are reliable in short duration protocols and may be used by coaches and athletes for monitoring training.