Strength and conditioning programs for improving swimming performance in competitive swimmers: a systematic review

Abstract

Strength and conditioning (S&C) are commonly integrated into competitive swim coaching but questions regarding, which type of strength exercises result in the optimal improvements of underwater skills, the appropriate progression of the exercises remain unresolved. This systematic review merges the experimental findings where the main goal of S&C interventions was to enhance the performance of the swimmers. The review procedures conformed with the PRISMA 2020 statement requirements. First, Scopus was the search engine, which by a Boolean search was the first to provide 699 records, after that, 127 were the next ones to be left and from these, 20 were actually the intervention studies, which have been selected after the duplicates were removed in addition to filtering out the document type, the language, publication year, area, and also title and abstract screening. Eligible articles reported various S&C methods such as dry-land, in-water, resisted, plyometric, concurrent, or acute-potentiation as the swimmers were exposed to these and the swimming data were given. High-repetition low-relative-load and velocity-oriented protocols, short-term (6-12 week) mesocycles, and swimming-specific prescribing of the force vector turned out to be the most important elements in programming. As stated, the paper urges the implementation of swim training plans by means of S&C that is highly targeted and transfer oriented, at the same time, the authors point out the necessity for conducting the researches of a larger sample size and a longer time duration with a control of variables better as means to verify the conclusions of this study and to expand its scope.