The order from lowest to highest wave intensity at identical submaximal speeds was backstroke, front crawl, breaststroke and butterfly. The four competitive strokes have been shown to produce a different wake, or make waves of different intensity. Furthermore, one study shows an 8% reduction in performance for children performing a 200m swim in waves compared to flat water. the less experienced lifeguards suffered the greatest decrement. They also found a significant effect of experience, i.e. They found a reduction in swimming performance from a pool setting to calm sea swimming of 10-12%, and from calm sea to surf sea swimming of 30-57%. They found significantly slower swimming speed in surf compared to calm sea and in calm sea compared to pool swimming. The differences in lifeguard performance when swimming in a pool versus swimming in the sea in calm and surf conditions were investigated by Tipton et al. There are only a few studies that have investigated swimming performance in outdoor conditions. In Norway only 7% of the drowning cases were in the category “Bathing” – including pool and beach activities, the rest of the accidents in the period of 1998-2010 happened in an outdoor setting (sea, lake, river), i.e.

For instance, in the tropical islands of Hawaii, 41% of drowning accidents happened in a pool setting and 39% in a surf or bay area setting. This order did not change when introducing waves, and the velocity decrement was 4 and 2% for medium and large waves respectively (not significantly different from other strokes).ĭrowning accidents happen in many arenas. For the subgroup swimming with fins, this was the fastest stroke, followed by front crawl, and head-up crawl. The average velocity decrement when introducing medium and large waves was 3% and 7% respectively. When introducing medium or large waves, the order of strokes from fastest to slowest was identical to flat-water conditions. The fastest stroke in flat water was not surprisingly, front crawl, followed by head-up crawl, back crawl and breaststroke. A repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant effect of stroke, F(3,23)=108 (p<0.001), showing that these four strokes have different levels of performance and wave height F(2,24)=87 (p<0.001), showing that introducing waves reduced velocity, but there was no interaction effect. A subgroup swam front crawl, head-up crawl and head-up crawl with fins.

The strokes studied were front crawl, head-up crawl, back crawl and breaststroke. The wave heights were flat, medium (ca 20 cm) or large (ca 40 cm), in a specially designed wave-simulating pool. Thirty-three subjects swam twelve 25m sprints each, in a randomized order, in a 3x4 (wave height x stroke) design.

Waves 11 complete v11.0.43