1,721,030 research outputs found

    The decline of swimming performance with advancing age: a cross-sectional study

    No full text
    The decline of swimming performance with advancing age: A cross-sectional study. J. Strength Cond. Res. 20(4):932–938. 2006.—The aim of this cross-sectional study was to measure the swimming parameters— speed (V), stroke frequency (SF), and stroke length (SL)— in 162 male athletes aged 50–90 (divided into 7 age groups, from A to G) participating in the World Master Championships in the 200-m freestyle event, and to analyze the rates and magnitudes of their age-associated declines. The swimmers were video-recorded by 2 digital cameras during the competitions and the swimming parameters related to every 50-m section (lap) and to the entire race (average) subsequently measured or calculated. Lap V and SF decreased in the second and third quarter (11 and 4% on average) and increased (3% on average) in the fourth quarter of the race, whereas lap SL decreased from the first to the last 50-m section. Average V (m·s1) decreased from 1.39 0.09 (group A) to 0.84 0.11 (group G); average SL (m) decreased from 2.10 0.20 (group A) to 1.78 0.19 (group G); and average SF (cycles·s1) decreased from 0.67 0.06 (group A) to 0.47 0.04 (group G). One-way analysis of variance showed significant declines in average V, SL, and SF (p 0.01) across the 7 groups. The swimming parameters were normalized to the highest values (set equal to 100); thereafter, a linear regression curve was fitted and the regression equations calculated. Decline of SF was about 2.5 times steeper than that of SL. It was highlighted that (a) among the swimming parameters, SL is less affected by the ageing process; (b) SL decreased from group A through group C and thereafter tended to keep steady, whereas the trend for SF was opposite. The results have the potential to give master swimmers and their coaches useful information for training program design

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

    Full text link
    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
    corecore