Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming XI

age tethered swimming force in the total sample (Figure 1a) for both
pre-pubertal (Figure 1b) and pubertal athletes (Figure 1c). In addition,
the majority of anthropometric variables were significantly related to
performance in pubertal swimmers.
From the PCA analysis, three components were extracted and were
labelled in the following order: Component-1: Anthropometric-Tethered
Swimming Force (TSF), Component-2: Body Composition and
Component-3: Body Dimension. Variables were well defined and their
communalities ranged between 0.70 and 0.98. In addition, based on the
loading of variables on the three components, the percentage of cumulative
variance explained the 88% of the performance score. A multiple
regression procedure was used to determine which components were
significant predictors of the maximal 50-m front-crawl swimming score
(Table 2). Correlation coefficients between the above three factors and
the performance swimming score revealed that, in the total sample, the
anthropometric and TSF were significantly correlated with performance
(r=-0.71, p