Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on almost all social activities, including sport participation. Swimming training was greatly reduced during the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 seasons (by four and two months, respectively), which caused athletes and coaches to worry about performance in championships. The present study investigated the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on the results of Greek swimming championships in the categories of 13 to 18 years of age during 2020 and 2021. Forty-one coaches were interviewed about the training process (satisfaction, duration of the training season, and daily training swimming distance), and the performance of swimmers in national championships over seven seasons (2014–2021) was analyzed. The duration of the training season and the daily swimming distance, as reported by the coaches, were lower during the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 seasons, compared to the previous five seasons (p < 0.001). The number of swimmers who achieved qualifying times for the national championships during the COVID-19 era were similar to those in previous years. Comparisons of the times in the 100-m and 400-m freestyle events, in both genders, from 2015 through 2021, showed no significant differences except for the 400-m event in males, in which a lower performance was detected in 2021 compared to 2015 (by 2.7%, p = 0.001). In conclusion, two or four months of detraining during the COVID-19 era had a negative impact on the coaches’ evaluation of the training process, but there was no effect on the number of young swimmers who qualified for the national championships and a negligible effect on swimming performance in 100-m and 400-m freestyle events.
Highlights
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralThe years 2020 and 2021 were the years of the “COVID-19 era”
The questionnaire included the following questions: (i) “How satisfied were you with the training process relative to the 2014–2015 season?”, (ii) “How many months did your swimmers train?”, (iii) “How many kilometers did your short-distance swimmers swim per day during training on average?”, and (iv) “How many kilometers did your middle-distance swimmers swim per day during training on average?”
Greece trained from September to mid-March, stopped swimming training for two months, and trained again from mid-May until the national championships in mid-July
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralThe years 2020 and 2021 were the years of the “COVID-19 era”. Because many aquatic facilities are indoor, the Hellenic Swimming Federation (HSF), in accordance with the Greek government’s safety protocols, allowed only a few swimmers, belonging to the national teams, to continue training. The remaining competitive swimmers, who regularly participated in national championships, stopped training. This resulted in lower training load and reduced training specificity, as reported by Pla et al [1]. Most coaches in Greece train swimmers that are 13 to 18 years old, according to HSF records. These coaches must design training programs that meet the needs of different ages, capabilities, and specificities. Coaches have more-or-less stable habits, or a “coaching style” [2], and usually place a strong emphasis on high-volume, low-intensity training [3,4]
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