Building on the announcement by the Government of Canada that it will match private sector investment in support of the next generation of Canadian Olympic hopefuls, a not-for-profit organization has also committed to backing promising athletes.
Specifically, “Own the Podium”, an organization that “prioritizes and determines investment strategies to national sport organizations in an effort to deliver more Olympic and Paralympic medals for Canada”, has awarded a grant of $110,700 to kinesiology professor John Barden. The grant is meant to fund the improvement of Team Canada’s swim team’s performance at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Barden is studying how competitive swimmers move in the water by way of motion sensors, which give biofeedback during the athlete’s workout. “If a swimmer wants to wear the device, which would typically be about two hours, we can track the information on every single stroke that they take,” he explained.
Thus far, Barden says the system he has developed is helping coaches make adjustments to details that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. “For example, if a swimmer is very fatigued, and they’re at the end of the week and they’ve had a lot of training sessions, and things start happening with their strokes, and things are changing, the data may tell us that.”
http://www.indiana.edu/~ccss/research/shaving-down.php counsilman center has done some research looking into shaving down.
Prof. Barden,
I would like to know if this study will conform to the parameters my 50 years plus has shown to be in terms of what part of the legs to shave and what part to not shave to maximize speed and minimize resistance!? This is going into the book I am writing on coaching swimming some parts of which have never been addressed before as far as I know.
Art Winters
I would think that biomechanical stroke analysis is already available for elite swimmers from the US (albeit perhaps not using motion sensors that provide biofeedback or by a Kinesiologist with a PhD like Dr Barden). Does anybody here on SwimSwam know about how US Swimming addresses the issue of stroke efficiency with our athletes? Obviously coaches handle it with their own swimmers on a daily basis, but is more scientific analysis available to them?