Analysis of best performances of front crawl swimming: a case study

Purpose: The aim of this work was to: 1) measure the energy cost of front crawl swimming at various speeds (range .8 -1.8 m·s-1 in elite and medium level swimmers; in addition, 2) estimate the maximal aerobic power and maximal anaerobic capacity from the relationship between overall energy spent and individual best times over distances from 50m to 1500m in one elite athlete. It will also be shown, that 3) the so obtained values are rather close to the actually measured ones. Methods: Oxygen consumption was measured on 13 medium level and 5 elite swimmers (best time over 100m, 51.50±3.54s), swimming the front crawl in a 25m indoor pool in the speed range .8-1.8 m·s-1. So, the energy cost of front crawl (Csw) could be calculated. Results: In both groups Csw increased with the speed as a second order polynomial. In the elite group it was ≈ 17 to ≈ 34 % smaller than in medium level swimmers, (P= .005). Knowledge of Csw allowed us to estimate the overall energy expenditure (Etot) during actual competitions as a function of the corresponding performance time (tr) in one elite swimmer. The results show that (Etot) increased linearly with tr. For tr ≥ 100s the slope and y intercept of the resulting linear regressions yield V̇ O2max and maximal anaerobic capacity, respectively. These turned out to be close to the directly determined values. Conclusions: If the energy cost of swimming as a function of the speed is known, this approach yields reasonable estimates of the swimmers’ maximal oxygen consumption and maximal anaerobic capacity.