SWIMMING PERFORMANCES AND STROKING PARAMETERS IN NON SKILLED GRAMMAR SCHOOL PUPILS - RELATION WITH AGE, GENDER AND SOME ANTHROPOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS

Objective. It was hypothesized that swimming velocity (V) and stroking parameters such as stroke length (SL), stroke rate (SR) and stroke in dex (SI) are influenced by age, gender, and some anthropometric charac teristics. Experimental design. Cross-sectional study, Setting, Gramma r school pupils from French schools, Participants, One thousand and ni nety-seven males and 961 females non skilled swimmers aged from 11 to 17. Interventions. Usual swimming sessions (6+/-2 h.year(-1)) during a physical education program at school, Measures. V, SL, SF and SI (SI= V.SL) were measured or calculated from a 50-m crawl sprint and height, arm span and body mass were measured for all subjects,Results. The re sults showed that V, SL and SI increased regularly (p<0.01) in relatio n to age in both genders, SL was never significantly different between males and females, SF remained unchanged according to age and was sig nificantly higher in males than in females, V, SL and SI were influenc ed by age and arm span but not SF. Conclusions. As males and females w ere submitted to the same swimming;teaching program at school, a highe r increase in muscle power and anaerobic capacity in males could expla in the gender differences, These results observed in non skilled swimm ers showed that the differences in stroking parameters between genders were the reverse of those of top level swimmers and that they can be used by swimming teachers in order to build some assessment tools and to better understand the improvements in swimming in relation to growt h and gender.