Biomechanics of Competitive Swimming Strokes

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Competitive swimming is one of the most challenging sports to perform scientific research. Not only the research of human movement is quite complex, because human beings are not so determinists as other (bio)mechanical systems; but also, assessing human beings in aquatic environment becomes even more as this is not their natural environment and other physical principles have to be considered. On regular basis, for human movement analysis, including the ones made on aquatic environments, experimental and numerical methods are used. Experimental methods are characterized by attaching bio-sensors to the subjects being analyzed, acquiring the biosignal and thereafter processing it. Numerical methods are characterized by the introduction of selected input data, processing data according to given mechanical equations and thereafter collecting the output data. Both methods groups aim to perform kinematics analysis, kinetics analysis, neuromuscular analysis and anthropometrical/inertial analysis. These method groups are also used for biomechanical analysis of competitive swimming. A swimming event can be decomposed in four moments or phases: (i) the starting phase; (ii) the swimming phase; (iii) the turning phase and; (iv) the finishing phase. During any swimming event, a swimmer spends most of his/her absolute or relative time in the swimming phase. Therefore, the swimming phase is the most (but not the only one) determinant moment of the swimming performance. In this sense, a large part of the biomechanical analysis of competitive swimming is dedicated to the four competitive swimming strokes: (i) the Front Crawl; (ii) the Backstroke; (iii) the Breaststroke and; (iv) the Butterfly stroke. The aim of this chapter has two folds: (i): to perform a biomechanical characterization of the four competitive swimming strokes, based on the kinematics, kinetics and neuromuscular analysis; (ii) to report the relationships established between all the domains and how it might influence the swimming performance.