Change in young swimmers’ anaerobic potential in response to taper

Abstract

The current study aims to determine the effect of one-week tapering on the anaerobic potential of young swimmers based on a simple and non-invasive test. Twenty competitive young swimmers (12.83 ± 1.08 years) performed an all-out 25 m front crawl sprint coupled to an electromechanical speedometer before and after a week of taper. The variation of the velocity along time [v/(t) curves] was determined for each swimmer. The push-off maximum velocity, push-off velocity decay, maximum and average gliding velocity, maximum and average swimming velocity, fatigue index, swimming velocity decay, velocity variation coefficient, total number of cycles, and total swim time were calculated. An individual anaerobic fatigue threshold was determined by applying a mathematical procedure based on wavelet analysis to the aforementioned v/(t) curves. The number of upper limb cycles performed was registered using video. The blood lactate concentration was measured at rest and after the 25 m sprint. The swim duration time of 25 m (pretaper: 17.91 ± 1.69; post-taper: 17.90 ± 2.18 s, p= .976) and the post-effort blood lactate (pre-taper: 4.92 ± .85 and post-taper: 4.77 ± 1.80 mmol/l, p= .780) did not change with the taper. The other variables also did not change, except for the velocity decay (-1.19 ± .94 vs. -.52 ± .21 m.s-1, p= .016). The moment of occurrence of the anaerobic fatigue threshold was no different after the taper. The one-week taper did not significantly change young swimmers’ anaerobic potential.