TITLE:
The Motion Evaluation of Front-Crawl Swimming upon Reaching the Goal on Unilateral Forearm-Amputee Swimmer
AUTHORS:
Tetsuro Tanigawa, Kazumasa Kumamoto, Hiroe Kataoka, Takenori Awatani, Ikuhiro Morikita
KEYWORDS:
Swimming, Touch the Goal Wall, Unilateral Forearm-Amputee Swimmer
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Physical Education,
Vol.8 No.1,
February
13,
2018
ABSTRACT: In this study, the finishing movement of front-crawl swimming upon reaching the goal was carried out by a unilateral forearm-amputee swimmer experimentally, and the difference between the finishing movements of the impaired side and the healthy side was compared in order to examine the effectiveness of each finishing movement. The subject was one female unilateral forearm-amputee swimmer (Impairment Classification S9) who has participated in Paralympic. The experiment practice was set that the subject carried out front-crawl swimming with the maximum effort without taking a breath from the 10 m point before the goal toward the goal wall. The practice conditions were set with four types, in order to verify with which arm the subject used to touch the goal wall (with the impaired side or the healthy side), and whether she touched the goal wall in the water or above the water. For evaluating a finishing movement, the standard value was set with the estimated time required when the swimmer touched the goal with her head top while maintaining the swimming speed when reaching the goal. And the difference between the standard time and the actual required time was calculated as the time loss (seconds). Among the four types of finishing movements evaluated in this research, the time loss during the finishing movement tends to decrease when the subject touched the goal with her healthy side in the water (-0.20 ± 0.01 seconds), while it tends to increase when she touched the goal with her impaired side in the water (0.08 ± 0.07 seconds). This result suggests the possibility that a unilateral forearm-amputee swimmer can expect better results by touching the goal with the healthy side in the water. For achieving this, the swimmer needs to adjust his/her strokes as making the finishing touch by the healthy side in the water.