Effect of training with fins on swimming performance in kids and young recreational swimmers

Abstract

Background: Swimming is a common choice to start practicing sports. Besides, swimming can be considered an early specialization sport. Thus, it is important finding adequate methodologies to improve the teaching-learning process of the technical parameters of the swimming styles. It is unknown if the use of fins can affect the athlete's improvements at long-term, despite being a common resource in swimming schools due to its immediate effect on swimming speed; (2) Methods: 37 kids and young recreational swimmers participated in this study. 20 kids swimmers (KS) were between 7 and 9 years old and 17 young swimmers (YS), between 12 and 14 years old. At the same time, both groups were split into two subgroups – one that used fins to train (KSF and YSF) and another one that did not used fins (KSNF and YSNF). The study lasted 8 weeks, with two 1-hour weekly sessions. Weeks 1 and 8 were dedicated to the pre-test and post-test, respectively, where the time of swimming different distances freestyle, backstroke and butterfly was kept. The information was classified based on the groups and a statistical analysis was performed; (3) Results: all groups improved their performance after the intervention. However, no significant differences were found between groups except in KSF and KNSF, where KSF had a greater improvement in the backstroke test (p(ES)= 0.005(0.78)); (4) Conclusions: a 6-week training program improves performance in KS and YS. The continued use of fins does not seem to affect the performance improvement in these age groups, except in backstroke, where it helps improve significantly in KFS. These results can help the coaches of swimming schools to create more homogeneous groups in speed and to organize more easily the training session unifying swimming paces with the use of fins by slower children without the risk of affecting their improvement.