Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming XI

BiomechanicsandmedicineinswimmingXi
The Leon Lewillie Memorial Lecture: Biomechanics
and Medicine in Swimming, Past, Present and
Future
Vilas-Boas, J.P.
University of Porto, Faculty of Sport, CIFI2D, Portugal
Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming (BMS) is a series of international
symposia organized every four years. The organizers are an International
Steering Group, under the auspices of the World Commission
of Science and Sport (WCSS), together with a competent Conference
host. The WCSS is a working group under the umbrella of the International
Council of Sports Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE),
and its purpose is to promote the application of science to sport. The
BMS series started in 1970, in Brussels, by the hands of Leon Lewillie
and J.P. Clarys, with the first proceedings book published one year later.
This paper aims to present an overview of, and synthesize the main axes
of the contributions of the ten books published from 1971 to 2006, and
to speculate about the future tendencies of the research and knowledge
evolution in this specific domain.
Key words: biomechanics, medicine, swimming, research, review
IntroductIon
Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming (BMS) is, in our days, a
brand name that means “aquatic swimming science”, despite that, in
stricto senso, it refers to two very specific fields of interest, practice, and
research (Biomechanics and Medicine). The power and strength of the
BMS brand name is mostly related to the popularity and scientific relevance
of the “International Symposium of Biomechanics and Medicine
in Swimming” series (firstly entitled “Biomechanics in Swimming”),
whose 40th anniversary we celebrate in Oslo. Thanks to Leon Lewillie
and J. P. Clarys, since 1970, and each four years, BMS is the meeting
point of those that, worldwide, are struggling daily for the progress of
knowledge in swimming science, and so progressively enlarging frontiers
to new fields and topics. During this 40 year period, eleven scientific
books related to swimming were published (the 11 th being the present
volume), all of them - and hopefully also this one - being determinant
for the spreading and consolidation of swimming knowledge, and for
the progress of aquatic swimming sports and activities. Despite this, it
is not necessarily indexed scientific literature, though it is peer reviewed
literature, very attractive for authors, and much appreciated by the community.
In the BMS book series, several authors were asked to, or decided
to produce literature overviews to define the state of the art in general
swimming science, or strictly in the Biomechanics and Medicine fields.
We have the honor of being invited to follow the steps of scientists like
Leon Lewillie (BMS IV, 1983) himself, James Hay (BMS V, 1988), Jan-
Pieter Clarys (BMS VII, 1996), and Mitsumasa Miyashita (BMS VIII,
1999), which provided literature overviews on similar topics. Trying not
to be redundant with their contributions, despite the time lag between
those and the present text, it was decided to follow a slightly different
approach, in this case specifically centered on the ten BMS books available
until now.
The aim of this paper was to analyze the ten BMS books available in
order to characterize the past and the actual state of the art of Biomechanics
and Medicine in Swimming research and knowledge, trying to
obtain foundations to speculate about the future trends of development.
Methods
To address the purpose of this contribution, we analyzed the first ten
books of the series Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming (Lewillie
and Clarys, 1971; Clarys and Lewillie, 1975; Teraud and Bedingfield,
12
1979; Hollander, Hujing and de Groot, 1983; Ungerechts, Wilke and
Reischle, 1988; MacLaren, Reilly and Lees, 1992; Troup, Hollander,
Strasse, Trappe, Cappaert, Trappe, 1996; Keskinen, Komi and Hollander,
1999; Chatard, 2003; Vilas-Boas, Alves and Marques, 2006) -
despite their titles not always being exactly the same - characterizing
their contents and authorship, and relating the output with the general
body of knowledge in swimming science.
This approach was conducted in four steps: (i) number of papers
published; (ii) affiliation of the first author (considering todays’ political
geography); (iii) number of papers per category of analysis, and (iv) scientific
content. The categories of analysis were defined based on Clarys
(1996, Foreword to BMS VII). However, some were merged and others
subdivided. The categories were as follows:
(i) Biomechanics, including hydrodynamics, kinematics, kinetics,
stroke parameters analysis, and coordination;
(ii) Physiology, including biochemistry, nutrition, ergogenic aids
and supplements, and thermoregulation;
(iii) Biophysics, including efficiency and energy cost studies, as well
as those that explicitly tried to relate biomechanical and physiological
approaches;
(iv) Psychology;
(v) Medicine, including injuries and therapeutics;
(vi) Electromyography;
(vii) (Kin)anthropometry;
(viii) Instrumentation;
(ix) Evaluation;
(x) Pedagogy and educational water activities;
(xi) Training;
(xii) Miscellaneous, and
(xiii) Reviews.
The analysis was performed considering the researcher’s personal classification
of each paper, considering, by order: (i) title; (ii) key-words;
(iii) editorial classification, and (iv) content of the article. Some of the
papers were the object of double or triple classification since they clearly
affiliate to two or three categories. Consequently, the summation of the
entries per category doesn’t match with the total number of papers. The
percentage analysis, however, was referred to the total number of papers
analyzed (622), and not to the total number of entries (781), in order to
more realistically express the importance of each topic. Thus, 159 entries
were second or third entries of one paper, which means that 25.6 % of
the papers required second or third entries.
To allow further analysis of the findings, and trying to characterize
more globally the swimming science peer reviewed and indexed research
tendencies, a PubMed TM search was conducted on the 15 th January 2010.
The same percent distribution analysis and the same categories (with the
exception of “Reviews”) were considered for the search; dates were not
restricted, and “Human” was imposed as a limit. “Miscellaneous” was
assumed to be extractable from the subtraction of the sum of the output
for the other selected categories to the total output of the search (9835
references).
results
The distribution of the 622 analyzed papers for the 10 books published
between 1971 and 2006 is presented in Fig. 1.