Should the gliding phase be included in the backstroke starting analysis?

Biography

Karla de Jesus is a PhD candidate who has been investigating the backstroke starting since her Master course. Karla was a swimmer for many years and won many titles, with two Brazilian records in relay swimming events.

Synopsis

The underwater phase in swimming starts has been divided into gliding and underwater kicking (Vantorre et al., 2010). The former corresponds to the period between full immersion and beginning of lower limbs propulsion, and the latter is defined between gliding ending and beginning of upper limbs propulsion (de Jesus et al., 2012; Vantorre et al., 2010). Since swimmers have to perform upper, trunk and lower limbs movements to decrease the vertical displacement after backstroke start full immersion (Green et al., 1987), it might be speculated that propulsive actions occur as soon as swimmers entering the water, evidencing the non-existence of a gliding phase at backstroke start. This study aimed to characterise the underwater phase kinematics at one of the most used backstroke starting variants.