Abstract
The purpose of this study was to identify the anthropometric, body composition, and motor abilities that best predict backstroke performance in male and female junior swimmers. Eighteen club level swimmers aged 12-14 years volunteered to take part in this study. Two days of testing included assessment of anthropometric (body fat percentage, body mass), longitudinal characteristics (height, upper body length, hand length, foot length, and arm span) and transverse characteristics (circumferences, diameters) and motor abilities (flexibility, muscular endurance test, upper and lower body power tests) were assessed on day one. Sport specific water-based tests (25 metre, 7 x 50 metre on 2 minutes, and 200 metre aerobic test) were conducted on the second day during which backstroke swim times, number of strokes were counted per length to calculate technique (stroke distance, stroke frequency, stroke index) as well as swim specific aerobic ability (VO2peak) was calculated using the technique parameters. In addition to descriptive statistics, the predictive variables for backstroke performance (measured in seconds) were investigated using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient together with Spearman rho.
M.A.(Sport Science)