Reliability of a semi-tethered front crawl sprint performance test in adolescent swimmers

This study aimed to evaluate the test-retest reliability of a sprint performance test with semi-tethered front crawl swimming to indirectly assess the current potential to perform at maximal anaerobic effort in adolescent swimmers. Eight adolescent swimmers participated in this study (gender: females (n = 4) aged 13.0 ± 0.8 years, body height 1.6 ± 0.0 m, body mass 50.1 ± 4.5 kg; and males (n = 4) aged 13.3 ± 1.3 years, body height 1.7 ± 0.1 m, body mass 59.0 ± 8.2 kg. The testing protocol consisted of two trials of 25 m semi-tethered front crawl swimming with maximal effort and with 1 kg resisted isotonic load. Velocity data were recorded automatically by the 1080 Sprint device for 15 m (between 3 m and 18 m). The Fast Fourier Transform algorithm filtered raw instantaneous swimming velocity data in distance (time) function. A third-degree polynomial was used to extract the individual velocity profile, from which the following variables were chosen for test-retest reliability and the assessment of sprint performance: t_trial15, v_max, v_min, tv_{to max}, tv_{at max}, D_to v_max, D_at v_max, fatigue index. Parameters such as vmax, vmin, and ttrial15 were estimated from swimming velocity profiles and considered as reliable. The CV showed low variance <5%; while ICC_2,1 demonstrated respectively good (ICC_2,1: 0.88), very good (ICC_2,1: 0.95), and excellent (ICC_2,1: 0.98) rate of relative reliability; and the Bland-Altman index revealed an acceptable agreement (LoA ≤5%) between two measurements. The sprint performance test based on semi-tethered front crawl swimming confirmed that t_trial15, v_max, and v_min were reliable variables to indirectly indicate a potential to perform the maximal anaerobic effort among adolescent swimmers. The evaluation of the swimming velocity profiles allows coaches to monitor the adaptive changes of performance during the training process.