Navigating the Aquatic Realm: Uncovering the Nutritional Needs of Swimmers
Sport Overview
Swimming involves propelling the whole body through the water by techniques such as butterfly stroke, breaststroke, backstroke, freestyle, and individual medley. The water may be in an outdoor pool, lake, ocean, or an enclosed water facility. Swimming can be done individually or in a team. It is a good sport for one's health and fitness. The training and competition environment can play a role in determining the physiological and physical characteristics necessary for swimming excellence (Pyne et al., 2014). The swimmers can train for national competitions or international competitions. Also, some people do it as a leisure activity. A trained coach supervises the swimmers for their safety. Swimming involves competition or distance of swimming using freestyle stroke, swimming on back and swimming without interruptions or diving. In a 25-meter long pool, the swimmer gets on the wall and dives the first 25 meters using the freestyle stroke and continues on the same freestyle until he touches the wall at the 50 meters mark. The athlete swims back using the freestyle before getting to the original spot at the wall. The mid-distance race takes place using 100 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters, and 1,500 meters. In these distance races, the athlete dives to swim the first 25 meters using freestyle stroke before turning kicks and takes five butterfly kicks before continuing over the distance in the same style (Yetter et al., 2022). The sport is endurance-based because the primary energy system used for a swimmer would be an aerobic system. The energy required comes from oxidation within the mitochondria (Whiting, 2015). Their muscles will also use an anaerobic system since oxygen can attend the fast twitch fibres as they swim hard and quick.
Energy System and Physiological Requirements
The required physical or physiological ability for an athlete swimmer to be successful is to build their muscle endurance, upper body and flexibility, improving agility and speed, and then overcoming poor biomechanics to propel in the water. There are different muscles that swimmers need to train to be successful, including the lats, core muscles, pecs, shoulder muscles, upper back muscles, biceps, and triceps. Coaches, swimmers, and a conditioning professional or trainer need to work in unison to develop the training plan, including building endurance, flexibility, and strength to make sure a swimmer is successful (Whiting, 2015). Swimmers need to compete for short course or long course competitions to cover different race distances. Being an aquatic sport, overcoming water resistance should as well be overcome. It means that a swimmer needs to propel himself or herself in the high-water velocity spectrum, which therefore means they need high propulsion.
People who are new to the sport need to have a flotation device. People who have been in the sport for a few weeks should not have a flotation device. It just means the swimmer must propel in the water to make progress or hold the positive anticipation at the top water surface to resist water resistance, and all these are ultimately developed using high power and speed (Yetter et al., 2022). Individuals who have been swimming for two years can propel in the water either back or front. Also, the athletes should have very sharp aquatic skills. The most fundamental physiological requirement is a high rate of ceiling energy system metabolism for ensuring slow-twitch muscles contraction speed (Pyne et al., 2014). Other fundamental characteristics are the athletes must be able to exhort effort at varying rates and speeds without biokinetic process error will mean success or not success. There are two ways to increase the ceiling, a) increase the survived mass and b) improve the ability to reach boundary conditions. The very first requirement is pushing the velecity-power curve to the far right to have a higher maximum paradoxal power for the swimmer. Anaerobic capacity and power can do swimming performance prediction (Maglischo, 2014). A swimmer can generate higher instantaneous power regardless of the mixing of energy or power. Also, there should be enhanced heart rate response to acute physical pulses due to some mechanisms.
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Nutrition During Recovery, Competition, and Pre-Competition
Swimmers need to take various nutrition-related protocols to recover. Usually, there are protocols at intervals of 2 to 4 hours as the swimmer becomes energized to get ready for her next competition. The swimmer may take a cold fluid carbohydrate drink to better the recovery process (Garthe et al., 2016). The swimmer's competition day starts at 6.30 using a light breakfast food, 5 hours from the competition. The food will be rich in carbohydrates to ensure a high tissue oxygenation index. The food