Movement evaluation of front crawl swimming: Technical skill versus aesthetic quality

Abstract

The study aim was to compare expert with non-expert swimmers’ rating of the aesthetic and technical qualities of front crawl in video-taped recordings of swimmers with low, middle, and high level proficiency. The results suggest that: i) observers’ experience affects their judgment: only the expert observers correctly rated the swimmers’ proficiency level; ii) evaluation of movement (technical and aesthetic scores) is correlated with the level of skill as expressed in the kinematics of the observed action (swimming speed, stroke frequency, and stroke length); iii) expert and non-expert observers use different strategies to rate the aesthetic and technical qualities of movement: equating the technical skill with the aesthetic quality is a general rule non-expert observers follow in the evaluation of human movement.

Inter- and intra-rater reliability of swimming teachers with different skill levels, in different conditions, evaluating front crawl arm movement in non-expert swimmers

“…The right upper limb movement during the front crawl was assessed from a checklist and it was chosen because it is considered the most propulsive action 8,15 .…”

“…The inter and intra-rater reliability tests are common approaches that enable the satisfactory use of a checklist by different teachers and for the same teacher over time 6,10,11 . This reliability refers to the condition of reproducing similar measures on different occasions 11,12 , being an important procedure in ensuring that the results do not have significant differences 6,8,10 . Furthermore, the interrater experiences should not influence the results, although the literature indicates that more experienced evaluators have better competences 8,10 .…”

“…This reliability refers to the condition of reproducing similar measures on different occasions 11,12 , being an important procedure in ensuring that the results do not have significant differences 6,8,10 . Furthermore, the interrater experiences should not influence the results, although the literature indicates that more experienced evaluators have better competences 8,10 . This is important because from this assessment that learning exercises will be proposed 5,10,11 .…”

“…These two conditions make inter-and intra-rater reliability difficult and make the use of checklist unviable as a pedagogical tool 10 . Additionally, teachers use particular and subjective assessment criteria that differ for observation and evaluation moment 8,13 . Then, the discussion before evaluation can match observation points among evaluators and as far as we know, this has never been tested.…”

Análise da força de mordida, atividade eletromiográfica e espessura dos músculos masseter e temporal em nadadores de elite - modalidade Crawl

“…O nado crawl é considerado a modalidade de maior rapidez entre os quatro tipos de nados competitivos e exercita quase todos os grupos musculares do corpo humano (Jakovljevic;McConnell, 2009;Zamparo et al, 2017). Neste esporte, a parte primordial do controle corporal é a respiração que deve ser eficaz, suave e automática e o nadador de elite tem que trabalhar com equilíbrio a respiração nas três fases: apneia, expiração e inspiração (Cardelli et al, 2000;Cardeli, 2003;Barbosa et al, 2016;Woorons et al, 2016).…”