Acute responses of biomechanical parameters to different sizes of hand paddles in front-crawl stroke

This study investigated the acute effects of different sizes of paddles on the force-time curve during tethered swimming and swimming velocity in front-crawl stroke. Fourteen male swimmers (20.0 +/- 3.7 years; 100-m best time: 53.70 +/- 0.87s) performed two 10-s maximal efforts in tethered swimming to obtain peak force, average force, impulse, rate of force development, stroke duration and time to peak force. Swimming velocity, stroke rate and stroke length were obtained from two 25-m maximal swims. Both tests were repeated in five conditions: free swimming, wearing small (280cm (2) ), medium (352cm (2) ), large (462cm (2) ) and extra-large (552cm (2) ) hand paddles. Compared to free swimming, paddles provided significant increases of peak force (medium: 11.5%, large: 16.7%, extra-large: 21.7%), impulse (medium: 15.2%, large: 22.4%, extra-large: 30.9%), average force (medium: 5.1%, large: 7.5%), rate of force development (extra-large: 11.3%), stroke duration (medium: 9.3%, large: 11.8%, extra-large: 18.5%), time to peak force (medium: 11.1%, large: 15.9%, extra-large: 22.1%), swimming velocity (medium: 2.2%, large: 3.2%, extra-large: 3.7%) and stroke length (medium: 9.0%, large: 9.0%, extra-large: 14.8%), while stroke rate decreased (medium: 6.2%, large: 5.5%, extra-large: 9.5%). It is concluded that medium, large and extra-large paddles influence the force-time curve and change swimming velocity, suggesting these sizes may be useful for force development in water.