Uso del neoprenosu efecto en el rendimiento en natación bajo diferentes condiciones experimentales

Abstract

Introduction: Wetsuits are used in swimming mainly to avoid hypothermia, with open water and triathlon competitions as wearing them often. It use in these sports varies, being mandatory, optional or prohibited depending on the water temperature, existing full body, sleeveless long and short wetsuits designs. The wetsuit also improves swimming performance due to the increased buoyancy, allowing better hydrodynamic position and decreased hydrodynamic drag. The overall aim of this Doctoral Thesis is to study the effect of wearing a wetsuit and a swimsuit on 400 m front crawl performance. Methods: A systematic review was developed to find out what had been studied on the area and then, 95 open water swimmers and triathletes swam 400 m front crawl with wetsuit and swimsuit in a 25 m swimming pool and in a swimming flume at different water temperatures. Anthropometric, biomechanical and physiological variables were analyzed. Results: Swimmers increased their swimming speed by 0.07 m·s-1 with wetsuit compared to conventional swimsuit, resulting in a 6% of improvement on 400 m front crawl performance (20.1 s). Stroke rate and the wetsuit thickness in females better explained the improvement on 400 m front crawl performance while using wetsuit. In the other hand, swimming in cold water with wetsuit do not produce physiological alterations that may impair performance, recommending its use when the water temperature is between 18-20ºC. Swimming at 18ºC without a wetsuit might influence 400 m front crawl performance as lower maximal blood lactate concentrations, ratio of perceived exertion and exergy expenditure were observed. In addition, when using the wetsuit Speedo Thinswim®, the higher value on propelling efficiency could be due to the reduction on hydrodynamic drag, inducing in a decrease in energetic contributions and therefore higher velocity might be reached with the same effort on 400 m front crawl, using this specific wetsuit. Conclusions: Swimming with wetsuit improves performance on 400 m front crawl and its use is recommended in open water and triathlon competitions. These findings increase our knowledge in understanding how the wetsuit change the swimming technique or influence the physiological responses while swimming compare to the swimsuit, which is important to improve the swimmers daily training and thus, the results in open water swimming and triathlon competitions.