Focus on One Swimming Stroke or Compete in Multiple: How Much Specialization Is Needed to Become a World-Class Female Swimmer?

ABSTRACT: Objectives: To investigate performance development and variety in swimming strokes of female swimmers from early junior to elite age. Methods: A total of 194,788 race times of female 200 m swimmers representing 77 nations were ranked at peak performance age and clustered into world-class finalists (>850 swimming points), international-class (750-850), national-class (650-750) and regional-class swimmers (550-650). Annual best times for each swimming stroke were retrospectively extracted throughout adolescence from 13 years of age. Longitudinal performance development and differences between the swimmers' main and their secondary swimming strokes were analyzed using linear mixed model. Results: World-class freestyle swimmers show significantly (p ≤ 0.042) higher

SUBMITTER: Born DP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11843929 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature