Psychological effects of 50-meter swimming: does tempo manipulation matter?

Abstract

Swimming is one of the world’s most popular recreational exercises and sports. Scholastic writings consistently demonstrate their physical and mental benefits. In contrast to earlier works, the current field experiment examined whether an ultrashort 50 m bout of swimming could yield positive changes in affect. It also tested whether swimming aided by steady and augmenting tempo (drumbeats) could generate additional psychological benefits, abbreviate swim time, and increase heart rate and perceived effort. Forty-eight adults completed freestyle or breaststroke 50 m laps in three counterbalanced conditions. The tempo manipulation did not influence any of the measures. However, simmers’ core affect increased as manifested in higher self-reported feeling states and arousal, regardless of the experimental condition. Similarly, participants’ positive affect was also increased after 50 m laps, and it was higher in breaststroke than freestyle swimmers throughout the study. No changes emerged in negative affect due to floor effects. These results show that core and positive affect improve after less than one minute of swimming, which might be the shortest ever exercise interval associated with positive psychological changes in recreational exercise. Several possible explanations could account for these findings. Therefore, further research is needed to identify the specific mechanism(s) responsible for the current results.