A better understanding of current swimming warm-up strategies is needed to improve their effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to describe current pre-competition warm-up practices and identify contemporary issues faced by elite swimming coaches during competition. Forty-six state-international level swimming coaches provided information via a questionnaire on their prescription of volume, intensity and recovery within their pool and dryland-based competition warm-ups, and challenges faced during the final stages of event preparation. Coaches identified four key objectives of the pre-competition warm-up: physiological (elevate body temperature/muscle activation), kinesthetic (tactile preparation, increase "feel" of the water), tactical (race-pace rehearsal) and mental (improve focus, reduce anxiety). Pool warm-up volume ranged from ∼1300-2100 m, beginning with 400-1000 m of continuous, low-intensity (∼50-70% of perceived maximal exertion) swimming, followed by 200-600 m of stroke drills and 1-2 sets (100-400 m in length) of increasing intensity (∼60-90%) swimming, concluding with 3-4 race or near race-pace efforts (25-100 m; ∼90-100%) and 100-400 m easy swimming. Dryland-based warm-up exercises, involving stretch cords and skipping, were also commonly prescribed. Coaches preferred swimmers complete their warm-up 20-30 min prior to race start. Lengthy marshalling periods (15-20+ min) and the time required to don racing suits (>10 min) were identified as complicating issues. Coaches believed the pool warm-up affords athletes the opportunity to gain a tactile "feel" for the water and surrounding pool environment. The combination of dryland-based activation exercises followed by pool-based warm-up routines appears to be the preferred approach taken by elite swimming coaches preparing their athletes for competition.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 9. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 February 2022.
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#5,754,564
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#2,930
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#72,365
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research
#53
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Altmetric has tracked 34,151,039 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 83rd percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,345 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 21.1. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 59% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 99 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 46th percentile – i.e., 46% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
