RESEARCH ARTICLE


Anaerobic Threshold Individualized Assessment in a Young Swimmer



Ricardo J. Fernandes1, *, Marisa Sousa1, Armindo Pinheiro2, Sonia Vilar2, Paulo Colaco1, J. Paulo Vilas-Boas1
1 University of Porto, Faculty of Sport, Centre of Research, Education, Innovation and Intervention in Sport
2 Futebol Clube do Porto


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Creative Commons License
© 2010 Fernandes et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Ricardo Fernandes, Faculty of Sport, Porto University, Director of the Swimming Department, Rua Dr. Plácido Costa, 91 4200-450 Porto Portugal; Tel: +351 225074763; Fax: +351 2255000687; E-mail: Ricfer@fade.up.pt


Abstract

The assessment of blood lactate concentrations is considered one essential procedure in physiological diagnosis of swimming performance. Our purpose was to assess the metabolic anaerobic threshold of an 11 year old swimmer through an individualized intermittent incremental protocol. Complementarily, stroking parameters were also determined. The subject performed a front crawl 5 x 200 m test, being the velocity controlled by an acoustic signal. The blood samples were collected from the ear lobe at rest and after each step. Stroke rate was registered by a chronofrequencemeter base 3, and stroke length and velocity were calculated at the end of each 200 m. The individual anaerobic threshold occurred at 1.2 mmol/l, rather lower than the traditionally used 4 mmol/l value suggested for trained swimmers. The velocity corresponding to anaerobic threshold was 1.06 m/s, representing a 5 s difference in a 100 m effort comparing to the velocity of 4 mmol/l. Stroke rate increased and stroke length decreased throughout the incremental protocol, i.e., with the velocity increments. It was concluded that the velocity corresponding to 4 mmol/l does not represent the individual anaerobic threshold in this young trained swimmer, and that he prefer to increase their velocity through the raise of stroke rate. Thus, given the importance of developing swimming technique in age-group swimmers, this swimmer should implement the lengthening of his stroke cycles in the training practice routines, trying to resist to the degradation of the stroke length when velocity increases.

Keywords: Anaerobic threshold, children, lactate, physiology, swimming.