Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming XI

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chaPter2.Biomechanics
The Development of a Component Based Approach
for Swim Start Analysis
cossor, J.M.¹, slawson, s.e.², Justham, l.M.², conway, P.P.²,
West, A.A.²
¹British Swimming, Loughborough, England
²Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough
University, Loughborough, England
A component-based system was developed to provide greater quantitative
feedback of starts based on input from British Swim coaches.
Currently the information provided by the system comprises integrated
vision, force data from an instrumented starting platform and wireless
three-axis acceleration data. Initial testing has demonstrated the reliability
of the system and the direct impact of intervention with an elite
athlete.
Key words: swimming, starts, vision system, force platform, wireless
acceleration
IntroductIon
Swimming races are divided into the start, turn, and free swimming
sections. The contribution of each phase to overall performance is dependant
on race length. The start has a greater contribution to success
in the sprint events compared with longer distances. Analysis of female
freestyle sprint events at the Beijing Olympics, illustrates that a 1% reduction
in start time would be larger than the time difference between
the first and second places (Slawson, 2010).
Research on swimming starts has included information on the block,
flight, underwater and free swimming phases. Block time has been the
most measured parameter although forces and velocities leaving the
block are generally discussed in relation to the block phase. Arellano et
al. (2005) and Mason et al. (2007) suggested that increased horizontal
force results in better starts. Flight time and distance are the main reported
parameters associated with the flight phase although the angle
of entry has been noted as being important to overall start performance
(Ruschel et al., 2007). While it is noted that the underwater phase can
be the longest in terms of time, the block and flight phases significantly
influence the drag forces experienced by the swimmer in the glide phase
(Mason et al., 2007). Transition into the break out and the free swimming
sections also contribute to the overall start time and variations
between swimmers are usually attributed to differences in underwater
kicking skill.
The use of vision systems is still the most common analysis technique
but it can be user intensive and costly. Force plate analysis has
been successful utilised due to the reliability of the system along with
the capability to provide real time measures. To date, the limitation of
utilising force data has been in the interpretation of these data and the
subsequent development of interventions for improved performance.
Accelerometers have been used in the understanding of human movement
and performance in areas such as gait, sleep and healthcare. Research
using accelerometers in swimming has included the derivation of
information on stroke count, lap count and stroke type (James et al., 2004,
Ohji, 2006, and Davey et al., 2008). Acceleration systems can be characterised
into either real-time data transmission or logging and download
units. Only the latter system has been used in swimming research and
only on a one to one basis. Although useful information on free swimming
performance has been disseminated from these studies, a wireless networked
solution would enable data to be collected real time from a pool of
athletes. A system has been designed, implemented and evaluated in the
current research that allows many wireless nodes to transmit in real-time
to a co-ordinating receiving unit that acts as the interface to visualisation,
analysis and storage on conventional personal computers.
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