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Fitness

Swimming May Be the Best Method of Recovery for All Athletes

New research shows improved performance and recovery ability when using swimming as active recovery. It might be the best way to recovery for the majority of hard-training athletes, not just swimmers.

Hannah Caldas

Written by Hannah Caldas Last updated on September 12, 2012

In my sport of swimming, and likely in others also, athletes use stretching, take ice baths, wear compression gear, get massages, and drink recovery shakes in the name of speedy muscle recovery. Recovery in any sport is a crucial aspect of training. While some athletes have a preferred method or routine that fits their training program, recent studies have provided some scientific evidence as to what method may actually be more beneficial over another.

A recent study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, looked at three classical recovery methods in seventeen elite male adult swimmers. The testing protocol involved two repetitions of 200m front crawl with 10 minutes of recovery time, with evaluation of recovery measured as clearance of serum lactate, as well as repeated performance time. The recovery methods tested in this study were massage, active recovery, and passive recovery.

The study revealed that all three recovery methods resulted in a significant decrease in blood lactate, however there was a significant difference in the levels of blood lactate clearance between them. A significant difference in performance time was also observed after all three recovery methods; however no significant difference was noted in performance time between active recovery and massage.

This study concluded that in the testing conditions used for this swim test set, active recovery was the most efficient method at clearing blood lactate, followed by massage, and finally passive recovery, while all being effective at clearing blood lactate. Further, it concluded that both active recovery and massage were equally effective at improving performance time post-recovery, while being more effective than passive recovery.

So the take home message from this study could possibly be that for swimming, an ideal mode of recovery would include both active recovery and massage for improved lactate clearance and performance time. USA Swimming already recommends active recovery for their swimmers (also referred to as cool down period, it is variable depending on the age of swimmer and the distance raced).

swimming, active recovery, recovery, rest, performance, triathletesBut swimming itself could lend itself useful as a recovery methodology of active recovery. Another study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at the performance of nine top triathletes. The athletes performed an interval run of 8 x 3 minutes at 85% to 90% of VO2 peak velocity on two separate occasions. Ten hours after the run, they either swam 2,000 meters or laid down for an equal amount of time. Fourteen hours after that, the subjects performed a high-intensity run to fatigue to assess how well their running performance had recovered from the previous day’s interval sessions.

The results showed the athletes had an improvement of 14% in their run time to fatigue after swimming for recovery compared to lying still (13:50 versus 12:08) concomitant with a decrease in the levels of c-reactive protein, a biomarker for inflammation. This suggests that swimming for recovery enhanced subsequent run performance by attenuating tissue inflammation caused by initial exertion, as well as benefitting from the hydrostatic properties of water. Interestingly the study also found there was no significant different in the perceived recovery between the two test groups while clearly showing differences in performance.

It would be plausible to infer that using swimming as an active recovery method is the way to go for swimmers, triathletes, and potentially runners based on the studies mentioned. For triathletes this information can be useful in planning training sessions, by including their swims on days after running. But could this recovery method also be applied to other sports? Many sports partially rely on running for improved performance: soccer, football, rugby, and CrossFit, to name a few. But if in the latter study recovery swimming improved performance due to attenuation of tissue inflammation, it is possible that recovery swimming could universally apply to any sport that causes tissue inflammation upon exertion (possibly 80-90% of sports) and not just running.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

Hannah Caldas

About Hannah Caldas

Since returning to swimming in 2010 after an 8 year retirement, Hannah Caldas has claimed FINA masters world records in 3 different relays and USMS National Records in the 50m Breaststroke and 50 and 100m Freestyle. She was awarded USMS 2010 and 2011 Pool All Star, earned All-American status in over 20 individual events, and was ranked as the fastest masters female swimmer in the world over 30 by FINA in the 50 and 100m Freestyle in 2011.

In 2012, Hannah was an Olympic hopeful for Portugal in the 50m Freestyle, but fell short of the qualifying time for London by 0.3s. She made a debut in Open Water Swimming in the Maui Channel Crossing Race, as a member of the Mixed Relay team in 2011.

Hannah started CrossFit in the summer of 2011, and in 2012 competed in the CrossFit Open and Southwest Regionals while simultaneously training and competing in swimming. She swims 4,000 meters per day, 2 hours per day, 6 days a week, and CrossFits 5 days a week, with one active rest and one full rest day.

In addition to her impressive athletic background, Hannah served as Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at Wake Forest University from 2006 to 2010. Since leaving academia, Hannah has lived in Phoenix, AZ, where she devotes her time to being a full time athlete. More recently, she has started applying her knowledge of functional fitness to help other swimmers and triathletes.

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