Influence of duration and intensity of warm-up sessions on the performance among short distance swimmers

It is well established that warm-up sessions are very important and essential part of every swimming competition. There is much evidence which tells how strong the influence of these sessions on swimming performance is. Although there are many suggestions about content of warm-up sessions in swimming, their duration and intensity, there are no clear conclusions about all segments of warm-up. Because of that many researchers tried to reveal how good warm-up sessions should look like. In this study 8 male and 4 female competitive swimmers aged 19 to 26 were tested. They were asked to swim three different warm-up sessions followed by 100 meters performance with maximal intensity. Before trial number 1 they performed long duration warmup session, before trial 2 short duration warm-up session and before trial 3 they were asked to perform warm-up session with high intensity. The recovery time between each warm-up session and the performance was 5 minutes and during these 5 minutes. ANOVA with Repeated Measures was used to test the differences in the performance that swimmers achieved after three different warm up sessions. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. The results showed that there was not significant difference in the performance after long duration and short duration warm-up sessions (p=1). On the other hand the difference in the performance on the trial 1 and trial 3 was significant (p=.02). Furthermore, the difference between trial 2 and trial 3 was significant as well (p=.03). Duration of the warm up session did not have significant influence on the performance. On the other hand, the results showed that the intensity of the warm-up has big influence on the performance. High intense warm-up without appropriate recover can cause drop in the result. More research needs to be done on this topic with many different conditions.