Muscle coordination during breaststroke swimming: Comparison between elite swimmers and beginners

Abstract

This file was dowloaded from the institutional repository Brage NIH -brage.bibsys.no/nih Vaz, J. R., Olstad, B. H., Cabri, J. M. H., Kjendlie, P.-L., Pezarat Correia, P., Hug, F. (2016). Muscle coordination during breaststroke swimming:Comparison between elite swimmers and beginners. Journal of Sports Sciences, 34, 1941Sciences, 34, -1948 AbstractThe present study aimed to compare muscle coordination strategies of the upper and lower limb muscles between beginners and elite breaststroke swimmers. Surface electromyography of eight muscles was recorded in 16 swimmers (eight elite, eight beginners) during a 25m swimming breaststroke at 100 % of maximal effort. A decomposition algorithm was used to identify the muscle synergies that represent the temporal and spatial organization of muscle coordination. Between-groups indices of similarity and lag times were calculated. Individual EMG patterns were moderately to highly similar between groups (between-group indices range: 0.61 to 0.84). Significant differences were found in terms of lag time for pectoralis major (p < 0.05), biceps brachii, rectus femoris and tibialis anterior (p < 0.01), indicating an earlier activation for these muscles in beginners compared to elites (range: -13.2 to -3.8 % of the swimming cycle). Three muscle synergies were identified for both beginners and elites. Although their composition was similar between populations, the third synergy exhibited a high within-group variability. Moderate to high indices of similarity were found for the shape of synergy activation coefficients (range: 0.63 to 0.88) but there was a significant backward shift (-8.4 % of the swimming cycle) in synergy #2 for beginners compared to elites. This time shift suggested differences in the global armto-leg coordination. These results indicate that the synergistic organization of muscle coordination during breaststroke swimming is not profoundly affected by expertise. However, specific timing adjustments were observed between lower and upper limbs.

Feasibility of Muscle Synergy Outcomes in Clinics, Robotics, and Sports: A Systematic Review

“…In this section, we reported the paper of Vaz et al [ 82 ], since it provides useful guidelines for the training of beginner swimmers. Authors compared beginners and elite swimmers in terms of muscle coordination during breaststroke.…”

Comparison of muscle synergies before and after 10 minutes of running

“…To facilitate the comparison of the set of synergies between subjects, four muscle synergies were extracted for all subjects22 ) . Table 1 shows the VAF of the number of muscle synergies and the VAF of the four muscle synergies was for the pre (VAF=91.3 ± 1.2%) and post sessions (VAF=94.6 ± 0.9%).…”

“…We selected the four modules based on Vaz et al22 ) to facilitate the comparing the modules between pre and post sessions although previous studies reported that there are five identified modules during running. On the other hand, it is suggested the possibility that long-term training changes modules23,24,25 ) .…”

Comparison of Modular Control during Sidestepping with versus without Groin Pain

“…To evaluate the time lag between groups, Mann-Whitney's U-test was performed in SPSS 24.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) according to the methods used by Vaz et al (2016). The signiˆcance level was set at less than 0.05.…”