Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming XI

BiomechanicsandmedicineinswimmingXi
in Sydney, the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth
Games in Manchester.
Following the successful analyses of swimmers with the “Big System”
during the mid 1990’s and the need for coaches to have similar
analysis information available to them between sessions during international
competition meets abroad, a portable competition analysis system
called SWAN was developed. Each SWAN system could analyze only
a single swimmer within each race, but it was portable enough to take
overseas with the team. During the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the
SWAN analysis system accompanied the Australian Swim team to most
international competition meets. Also during this period, the initial
development of a start and turn SWAN analysis system was developed
to be used in a training environment. The output from this system included
underwater visual video images and both timing and force analyses.
However, the output for the coach was not in a concise form and
was presented in a number of formats including video, hard copy paper
print outs of data and hard copy graphs. Probably the greatest barrier
to development of advanced analysis systems during this period was the
level of technology that was available for inclusion into such systems.
Prior to the Sydney Olympic Games, the A.I.S. sport science and medicine
departments provided most of the support to the Australian national
swim team. It was also during this period that each of the state governments
established state institutes of sport. With the approach of the 2000
Olympic Games there was increased Australian Government funding to
prepare Australian elite athletes for the Sydney games. During this period,
the state institutes were able to obtain federal funding for elite sports performance
enhancement, such that they were now performing many of the
functions previously provided only by the national sports institute.
In 2006, the A.I.S. embarked on a new concept of directing resources
into particular sports, such that the A.I.S. would lead the way in Australia
in these sports by concentrating its efforts in set directions. The
Aquatics, Testing Training and Research Unit (A.T.T.R.U.) was established
in January, 2006 and it operated out of a new 10 lane, three metre
consistent depth, 50 metre long technology pool. The A.T.T.R.U. was to
work with just aquatic sports and had as it fundamental role the servicing
and research for both A.I.S. swim teams and the Australian National
swim team. Along with this development was a concentration of biomechanical
and technology resources into elite Australian Swimming.
Initially the research objective of the A.T.T.R.U. was to develop state
of the art analysis systems. These systems would operate in a training
environment and would provide almost immediate feedback to coaches
and swimmers. A system called Wetplate (Figure 1) was developed that
provided the coach with immediate feedback analysis of starts, turns
and relay changeovers in a concise computer generated visual format.
Additional to the Wetplate analysis equipment, was another system designed
to look particularly at the free swimming element of the sport.
This was the active drag analysis system and provided as feedback to the
coach and swimmer, a video image of the swimmer’s actions along with
a moving graph of the propulsive force profile generated by the swimmer’s
technique.
Figure 1. The Wetplate system.
26
It became clear for the A.T.T.R.U. at this point in time that the major
research focus of the unit was on equipment and system development.
This in itself is a legitimate research area as it involves the bringing together
of different technologies to produce a system that is able to provide
insight into performance enhancement. Such systems are generally
not available commercially, so to provide the information to the swimmer
and coach there needed to be commercially available equipment,
such as Gig E cameras, computers and transducers that when assembled
together to form a system were able to provide what was required. The
analysis of skills needed pertinent and accurate information concerning
the execution of the skill in an immediate time frame. The analysis
results had also to be presented in a concise format that could easily be
interpreted by the coach and swimmer. The evolution of these systems
would result in questions by the coach that would result in more tradition
fact finding research projects.
By 2008, the Wetplate and Active Drag Analysis systems were well
entrenched into the training program of the A.I.S. swimming squad
and were regularly called upon at event camps and national swim team
camps. At these camps, Swimming Australia held intensive preparation
sessions for elite Australian international swimmers. Because of the vast
amount of information provided by the Wetplate system, it took quite
some time to identify those parameters and understand the interaction
of these parameters, to make a significant difference to improve a swimmer’s
performance. Small research projects were at first carried out by
the post graduate scholarship holders to do just that. Some such projects
involved researching the optimal angle of the knee to be utilized in
maximizing propulsion off the wall in turns. Another project involved
investigating the propulsive gains to be made by using the new FINA
approved starting blocks with the kick plate. It soon became apparent
that to optimize the learning and performance enhancement potential
of the new swim analysis systems, that the swimmer’s coach needed to
play a particularly active role with the swimmer during feedback at the
Wetplate analysis session. Feedback by the coach was more readily accepted
than by the biomechanist, but this model required that the coach
understand what was meant by each parameter assessed, understand
how each parameter related to performance and be able to provide appropriate
information to the swimmer that could readily be adopted and
incorporated into the swimmer’s actions during skill performance.
The A.T.T.R.U. also financially supported and accommodated several
Ph.D. scholarship programmes in conjunction with an Australian
University. In these Ph.D. programmes, part funding came from the
A.I.S. while other funding came from the university. These Ph.D. programmes
investigated research topics of interest to elite swimming performance.
One such Ph.D. project researched methods by which the
active drag analysis could be utilized to present the propulsive force profiles
of swimmers, in conjunction with video footage of their technique,
to identify and eliminate technique inefficiencies for the elite swimmers
that were analyzed. The procedures developed were able to be used in all
the swimming strokes and resulted in identifying problems associated
with such actions as breathing and asymmetry in the swimmer’s technique.
In freestyle swimming the active drag analysis procedures were
able to identify that most of the propulsive action of the arm during the
first half of the underwater stroke was utilized to compensate for the
forward movement of the recovery arm above the water. It was the last
half the stroke that produced the forward acceleration of the swimmer’s
body. The information from the active drag analysis focused upon the
total force produced by the entire body as a whole, rather than solely
by the arms or legs. Another Ph.D. research project focused upon how
best to utilize the new kick plate starting blocks. The Wetplate system
enabled the data for this project to be analyzed. Recently, a post doctoral
researcher from Ireland was funded by the A.I.S. to work within the
A.T.T.R.U. with the objective to analyze the most effective placement
of the dolphin kick in breaststroke starts and turns. This research project
arose as a consequence of the new FINA rules for Breaststroke.
The A.T.T.R.U. has recently focused upon active drag analysis as