Comparison of lung volume in Greek swimmers, land based athletes, and sedentary controls using allometric scaling.

Swimmers have superior FEV1.0 independent of stature and age in comparison with both land based athletes and sedentary controls. In addition, male national standard swimmers have superior FEV1.0 independent of stature and age in comparison with male non-national standard swimmers. When years of training is controlled for, the difference in FEV1.0 between the two groups is no longer evident. This suggests that the years of swimming training and/or the earlier age at which training begins may have a significant influence on subsequent FEV1.0 and swimming performance. However, because of the cross sectional nature of this study, the results do not exclude genetic endowment as a major determinant of the superior lung volume observed in swimmers.