Background: Land-based workouts have become an essential part of modern swim training programs, with growing evidence supporting their role in improving muscular strength, endurance, and injury prevention. However, despite their widespread application, literature has shown paucity in establishing a consistent and direct link between dry land strength training and measurable improvements in swim performance. Materials and Methods: Thirty-three young competitive swimmers (mean age 13.56 ± 1.43 years), 14 female and 19 males, state-level swimmers from Maharashtra state in India, participated in the study. Swim speed for a 50 m sprint was collected before and after 6 weeks of core strengthening protocol. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to analyze the pre- and postdata. Results: The test results demonstrated a statistically significant improvement following the intervention (Z = 3.66, P < 0.001) with a mean change in speed from 1.356 to 1.369 m/s. Conclusion: Adding core muscle strengthening exercises may improve the performance of young competitive swimmers, leading to noticeable gains in their 50-m freestyle sprint time and overall swimming speed. Level of Evidence: Therapy, level 4 evidence.
Shah et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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