49 Interim performance progression of talented swimmers 3 Discussion The present study investigated the in interim performance progression (IPP) during consecutive season best performances of talented swimmers. Part of this group ultimately made it to the top (referred to as elite swimmers) whereas others did not make it to the top (referred to as high-competitive swimmers). The main findings of this study showed that without denying individual differences 1) elite swimmers improved more in swim performance than highcompetitive swimmers during phase B (the period between the first rST and the current season best rST) and that 2) there were no differences between elite and high-competitive swimmers in performance progression between the previous season best performance and the first swim performance of the current season (PPA) (except for age 14 in males). Considering these outcomes, it is important to notice that the results of the present study are inextricably linked to how we defined the metrics of IPP: PPA and PPB. As it is well known that at some point during a swimmers’ career, the rate of performance progression begins to reduce (known as the principle of diminishing returns to training; Hoffman, 2014), we found it highly important to include metrics of IPP that enabled the interpretation of performance progression of swimmers relative to their previous performance level (PPA) and relative to the elite performance level (PPB). By relating performance progression to the gap a swimmer needs to close in order to break the world record, PPB accounted for the principle of diminishing returns and related performance progression to the (prevailing) fastest male or female swimmer of the world. Together, this makes that PPB can be compared between swimmers of different performance levels and generations and simultaneously can function as measure to point out how much a swimmer moved forward to the prevailing world record. In here, the present study aimed to make a more “fair” comparison between and within swimmers in a multigenerational and longitudinal dataset. To the best of our knowledge, the perspective on IPP and the related metrics of IPP have not been described in swimming literature yet. Since IPP is explained as the pattern of performance progression during two consecutive seasons relative to a common reference point (first rST), the present study contributed to additional insights about the course of performance progression of talented swimmers. Descriptive statistics show that during puberty, talented male and female swimmers progress in the period between the previous season rST and the first rST (PPA) and in the period between the first rST and the current season best rST (PPB). In other words: they progressed in both phase A and phase B. However, post-puberty, progression during two consecutive season best performances generally took place in phase B rather than phase A. The latter suggests that coaches and swimmers should not get too discouraged if the first swim performance of the current season is ~1% slower compared to the previous season best performance. As elite swimmers and high-competitive swimmers did not significantly differ in the performance progression in phase A (except for age 14 in males), we suggest that differences in PPB between elite and high-competitive swimmers should not be accounted to previously
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw