Women's Swimming Research Articles

The swimming habits of women who cold water swim.

Cold water swimming is growing in popularity, especially among women. We have previously reported that women felt that cold water swimming helps with their menstrual and menopause symptoms. But little is known about the habits of women who cold water swim. To determine the habits of women who cold water swim. This was a mixed-methods study. An online survey asked women who cold water swim about their experience of swimming and how this affected their menstrual and menopause symptoms. The survey was advertised for 2 months on social media, with a focus on advertising in cold water swimming Facebook groups. In this article, only the questions on the women's swimming habits were analyzed. The analysis of 1114 women, mainly from the United Kingdom, revealed that most had been swimming for 1-5 years (79.5%). Most swim in the sea (64.4%), and only 15.5% swim alone. The majority (89.0%) swim all year around, swimming for mainly 30-60 min in the summer and 5-15 min in the winter. The women mostly swim wearing swimming costumes (skins) throughout the year. The majority of the free-text responses showed women found mental and physical benefits from cold water swimming. It was not surprising to learn that women swim for longer in the summer than the winter, but hearing how they feel cold water swimming helps their physical and mental health is important. With the limitations on access and safety of many wild swimming sites in the United Kingdom, it is time to ensure that cold water swimming is safer and more supported.

Epidemiology of Injuries in National Collegiate Athletic Association Women's Swimming and Diving: 2014-2015 Through 2018-2019.

The number of women's swimming and diving teams sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association has increased over the last 5 years. Routine examinations of women's swimming and diving injuries are important for identifying emerging temporal patterns. Exposure and injury data collected in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance Program during the 2014-2015 through 2018-2019 athletic seasons were analyzed. Injury counts, rates, and proportions were used to describe injury characteristics, and injury rate ratios were used to examine differences in injury rates. The overall injury rate was 1.78 per 1000 athlete-exposures in swimmers and 2.49 per 1000 AEs in divers. Shoulder (33.0%) injuries accounted for the largest proportion of all swimming injuries; most injuries were classified as overuse (51.3%). Head or face (29.4%) and trunk (20.2%) injuries accounted for the largest proportions of all diving injuries. Findings indicated that shoulder and trunk injuries, as well as injuries resulting from overuse mechanisms, warrant further attention in swimming. Given the low in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance Program observed across the study period, the need for greater participation in sports injury surveillance is also apparent.

Description and Comparison of Preseason and Postseason Blood Pressure Measures Among Collegiate Athletes: A Prospective Observational Study

Purpose: Growing evidence suggests that suboptimal blood pressure (BP) measures among professional athletes parallel rates among nonathletes; however, BP measures among collegiate athletes of varied sports or the relationship of this measure to body mass index (BMI) has not been reported. The primary purpose of this study is to describe and compare preseason and postseason BP measures among collegiate athletes of varied sports and sexes. A secondary purpose is to describe correlations between a BP measurement and BMI during the course of a competitive season. Methods: A prospective observational study using a sample of convenience assessed resting BP and BMI of athletes from men's soccer, cross country, and swimming; and women's volleyball, cross country, and swimming at one Division I university. Blood pressure measures were further classified as elevated, stage 1, or stage 2 hypertensive (HTN) using previously established criteria. Descriptive statistics reported athlete demographics, BP, and BMI. A pairwise t test compared and determined differences in preseason and postseason BP. Correlations of BP with BMI were examined. Statistical significance was set at P ≤ .05. Results: Seventy-four athletes met preseason and postseason inclusion criteria. Preseason and postseason right-sided BP assessment identified 10.8% (n = 8), 5.4% (n = 4), and 1.3% (n = 1) and then 17.6% (n = 13), 17.6% (n = 13), and 1.3% (n = 1) athletes to have Elevated, stage 1 HTN, and stage 2 HTN measures, respectively. All BP measures demonstrated significant preseason to postseason increases (P = .001) in all sports with significantly higher BP increases in men compared with women. Furthermore, positive correlations between systolic BP and BMI were identified. Conclusions: Elevated and HTN BP measures were identified among collegiate athletes. Although significant increases in BP over time were detected, causative factors warrant further examination; however, increase in BMI may be a contributing factor. Findings of this study support routine BP assessment by physical therapists serving the collegiate athlete population.

Body Composition Variables by Sport and Sport-Position in Elite Collegiate Athletes.

Fields, JB, Merrigan, JJ, White, JB, and Jones, MT. Body composition variables by sport and sport-position in elite collegiate athletes. J Strength Cond Res 32(11): 3153-3159, 2018-To assess body composition measures by sport and sport-position. Elite collegiate athletes participated (n = 475): men's and women's soccer (MSOC, n = 67; WSOC, n = 110); men's and women's swimming (MSWIM, n = 26; WSWIM, n = 22); men's and women's track and field (MTF, n = 29; WTF, n = 24); women's lacrosse and volleyball (WLAX, n = 84; WVB, n = 73); and baseball (BASE, n = 40). One-way analysis of variances assessed differences across sport and sport-position. Post hoc analysis was Tukey honestly significant difference (p ≤ 0.05). For men, BASE and MSWIM had the highest body fat percentage (BF%) (BASE: 16.3 ± 5.2%; MSWIM: 14.2 ± 3.5%). MSOC (11.5 ± 5.3%, 0.13 ± 0.72 kg) and MTF (9.8 ± 5.1%, 0.11 ± 0.08 kg) had the lowest BF% and fat mass (FM)-to-fat-free mass (FFM) ratio (FM:FFM). Fat mass did not differ between MSOC (9.1 ± 4.9 kg), MTF (7.7 ± 5.9 kg), and MSWIM (11.1 ± 3.1 kg). Fat mass for MSOC and MTF was lower than BASE (14.1 ± 5.2). For women, WVB displayed the highest BF% (25.4 ± 5.1%), FM (18.5 ± 5.2 kg), FFM (53.3 ± 5.1 kg), and body mass (BM) (71.8 ± 8.4 kg), but did not differ from WSWIM in BF%, FM, FFM, and BM. WTF had the lowest BF% (12.9 ± 4.0%), FM (7.5 ± 2.5 kg), BM (58.2 ± 4.4 kg), and FM:FFM (0.15 ± 0.05 kg). VB had the highest FFM (53.3 ± 5.1 kg). Body composition differences were observed between sport-positions (p < 0.01). Body composition differed across sport and sport-position, which may be attributed to sport-specific physiological demands.

Addition of teams, facilities boosts fundraising efforts

Trying to expand an athletics program at a small school on a tight budget brings plenty of challenges. Just ask Willis Pooler, M.B.A., director of athletics at Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky. During his 14 years as AD, he's increased the student‐athlete population more than 70 percent; added football, wrestling, and men's and women's swimming; supervised the design of a new sports park and health/wellness center; and brought the athletics department's fundraising to an all‐time high.

CSM 2017 Sports Physical Therapy Section Poster Presentations (Abstracts SPO1–SPO152)

CSM 2017 Sports Physical Therapy Section Poster Presentations (Abstracts SPO1–SPO152)

Epidemiology of National Collegiate Athletic Association men's and women's swimming and diving injuries from 2009/2010 to 2013/2014

BackgroundRecent injury data for collegiate-level swimming and diving are limited. This study describes the epidemiology of men's and women's swimming and diving injuries reported by the National Collegiate Athletic Association...

Comparing and evaluating microbial and physicochemical parameters of water quality in men′s and women′s public swimming pools in Kermanshah, Iran: A case study

Amis: The present study was aimed to compare and evaluate the level of microbial (parasitic and bacterial) quality and physicochemical conditions of the water from five different types of indoor swimming pools (three men's and two women's pools). Materials and Method: This research was a cross-sectional study. Totally, 60 water samples were collected from five public swimming pools in Kermanshah, Iran. Microbial (parasitec and bacterial) and physicochemical conditions were examined according to the standard method. Results: Results indicated that the average of physicochemical parameters, except temperature, in all women's swimming pools was more sufficient than the men's swimming pools; but, there was no significant difference between them (P > 0.05). Conclusion: It can be said that, gender cannot be very effective (especially, in terms of physiological characteristics of skin) in varying physicochemical conditions and biological parameters in swimming pools. The main reason for changing these parameters might be attributed to some factors, such as type and extent of relationship between physicochemical and biological parameters, characteristics and source of water, type of filtration system, pools' operation and maintenance, effective disinfection, personal hygiene, etc.

The Enemy Within: Regulating Prostitution and Controlling Venereal Disease in Cisleithanian Austria during the Great War

During summer 1917, civilians using the city baths in Olmütz, Moravia, demanded that soldiers stationed at the local Emperor Francis Joseph infantry barracks cease swimming nude in the March River opposite the city baths, especially during the women's swimming hour. In addition to those of soldiers, the bathing habits of other culprits offended the good citizens of the city. One resident complained that children, adolescent boys and girls, and even some grown-ups, among them “buxom” prostitutes, were swimming nude in the March and thus offending the morals of others. “Flashers” also caught the attention of the public and the police, including the unknown man who made “immoral,” but unrecorded, remarks and exposed himself to the women who frequented the promenade under the Freundschaftshöhe in the western Bohemian spa town, Karlsbad, during the summer. The offended women provided the police with a good description of this man, said to be between forty-five and fifty years old, of average size, with gray, grizzled hair, a graying mustache, and a goatee. They described his clothing, a dark suit with knee-length pants, knee-high stockings, hiking boots, and a panama hat. (Records do not indicate whether police apprehended the suspect.) In the Bukovinian provincial capital Czernowitz, an eighteen-year-old electrical technician accused a forty-seven-year-old man from Saxony who allegedly propositioned him on the city's Ringplatz one late summer's evening in 1918 of “crimes against nature.” The most common “morals” problem to preoccupy the police and the military during the Great War, however, was neither flashers nor nude bathers; it was prostitution.

Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women's Swimming, 1870-1926

Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women's Swimming, 1870-1926

Danish Sport and the Nazi Seizure of Power: Indoctrination, Propaganda and Confrontation

At the Berlin Olympics in 1936 Danish sports officialdom in its near entirety mustered and could report on the series of impressive German victories and the organizers' fantastic ability to create an atmosphere and sense of unity at the most grandiose Olympics up until that time. Only among Danish Communists, cultural radicals, workers' sports movements, Jewish sports and in the social-democratic press was there resistance to a racist, military regime being allowed to hold games in the name of peace and understanding between peoples. Increasingly through the second half of the 1930s Denmark's small size as a nation state and its vulnerable position owing to its common border with an aggressive and armed German nation gave Danish responses to German sport their peculiar touch. First, in Nazi mythology, Denmark was defined as a pure Aryan zone and therefore was to be treated in the best manner possible. Second, it was possible in a direct geographical sense to link Denmark to Germany through women's distance swimming between the two countries and through events such as the three-day Berlin to Copenhagen stage race. As a consequence of all this, Denmark was the sole nation among the European democracies to continue cooperation on the sports field with Germany after the Second World War had broken out until the occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940.

Are There Limits to Swimming World Records?

The purpose of this article was to investigate whether swimming world records are beginning to plateau and whether the inequality between men and women's swimming performances is narrowing, similar to that observed in running world records. A flattened "S-shaped curve" logistic curve is fitted to 100-m, 200-m, and 400-m front-crawl world-record swimming speeds for men and women from 1 May 1957 to the present time, using the non-linear least-squares regression. The inequality between men and women's world records is also assessed using the ratio, Women's/Men's world record speeds. The results confirm that men and women's front-crawl swimming world-record speeds are plateauing and the ratio between women's and men's world records has remained stable at approximately 0.9. In conclusion, the logistic curves provide evidence that swimming world-record speeds experienced a period of "accelerated" growth/improvements during the 1960 - 1970s, but are now beginning to plateau. The period of acceleration corresponded with numerous advances in science and technology but also coincided with the anecdotal evidence for institutionalised doping. Also noteworthy, however, is the remarkably consistency in the women's/men's world record ratio, circa 0.9, similar to those observed in middle and long distance running performances. These finding supports the notion that a 10 % gender inequality exists for both swimming and running.

‘The Cradle of American Champions, Women Champions Swim Champions’: Charlotte Epstein, Gender and Jewish Identity, and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports

Charlotte Epstein advocated ardently for American women's competitive swimming and expanded swimming for women nationally and internationally in the early twentieth century. In her leadership as chair of the Athletic Branch of the National Women's Life Saving League (1913), and in battling the United States Olympic Committee to allow girls from the swim club she founded, the Women's Swimming Association of New York (1917), to compete in the 1920 Olympics, Epstein as an athlete and administrator advanced women's aquatic sports. This article explores the importance of Charlotte Epstein, an American Jewish woman, and the gender and ethnic contexts of her efforts in increasing women's participation in various swimming events. Epstein's ties with Jewish organizations such as the Young Women's Hebrew Association and the Maccabiah Games shaped her identity in aquatic sports. This analysis of Epstein's activism in swimming, such as in promoting swim races for suffrage and bathing-suit reform, illustrates her vital role in women's physical emancipation in the water and in American culture.

Injuries in female collegiate swimmers due to swimming and cross training.

To identify and compare the nature and frequency of training and cross-training injuries incurred by members of a women's collegiate swim team. A longitudinal survey of training-room and medical records for 7 years, classifying injuries by diagnosis and time lost from participation. Division I women's collegiate swimming program, United States. All swimmers in a Division I women's collegiate swimming program over 7 years, for a total of 68 swimmers. ASSESSMENT OF RISK FACTOR: Not applicable. Not applicable. "Injury" was defined as any contact with a trainer or physician that resulted in evaluation or treatment. Each injury was categorized with respect to (a) activity during which injury was incurred; (b) diagnosis, including body part injured; (c) time lost from participation in practice or competition; and (d) severity, i.e., minor (< or = 7 days), moderate (7-21 days), and major (> 21 days). An "Exposure" was defined as participation in one practice session or competition. The overall injury rate per 1,000 exposures per athlete was 2.12; 44% of injuries were due to swimming, 44% to cross training, and 11% to activities unrelated to athletics. Cross-training injuries occurred primarily in the lower extremities, while swimming injuries occurred more commonly in the upper extremities. The ratio of upper to lower extremity injuries due to swimming was 3:1, whereas the ratio for cross training was 1:4. Injuries to swimmers occur at a lower rate per exposure than to other collegiate athletic populations. Swimming injuries occurred primarily in the upper extremities, especially the shoulder. Lower extremity injuries occurred primarily due to cross training. We conclude that swimming is relatively safe compared to other collegiate sports, but special care should be used in designing injury-avoiding cross-training programs.

Dietary intakes of female college athletes: The need for nutrition education

At Ohio State University (OSU), coaches of the women's swimming and field hockey teams expressed interest in providing nutrition education to their respective teams. They were particularly concerned with the overall nutritional adequacy of the athletes' self-selected diets. A study was conducted to assess the current dietary intakes of the athletes and to compare their intakes with those of non-athlete college women

Use of Medications by US Olympic Swimmers.

As consultants to the United States Olympic Committee for Men's and Women's Swimming, the authors found that one-third of the Olympic swimming team had medications containing substances that could have disqualified them.

Effects of Physical Training on the Body Composition Add Diet of Females

Abstract A study was conducted to determine the effects of two different physical training programs on the body composition and dietary patterns of college females. Ten members of the women's tennis team and five members of the women's swimming team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, were subjects. Measurements were made of body density by underwater weighing, subcutaneous skinfold fat, estimated percent of body fat, and calorie intake by seven-day dietary histories. Both groups were measured three times during 16 weeks of sports training. No significant F ratios (.05 level) were found within or between the two groups for any of the experimental variables measured. Apparently, physical activity without strict dietary control has little effect in modifying the body composition or dietary patterns.