Aerobic evaluation of young swimmers using the critical velocity test a brief report

Critical velocity is the maximal swimming velocity that could be maintained for a long time without exhaustion.As it is considered to be well related with the exercise intensity corresponding to the individual anaerobicthreshold, critical velocity has been used to monitor the swimmer’s aerobic performance. However, studiesconducted in age-group swimmers are scarce and some literature does not use a long distance test as required forobtaining reliable critical velocity results. The aim of the present study was to assess critical velocity in 11-14years old swimmers in order to characterize their aerobic capacity. So, 56 girls and 62 boys performed 200 and800m front crawl tests at maximum intensity, being critical velocity assessed by the slope of the regression linebetween the test distances and the respective times. Critical velocity values were 1.21±0.06, 1.28±0.05 and1.25±0.06 m/s for the girls, boys and total group, with significant differences being observed between gendergroups. As expected, these results were lower than the values presented in the literature for older swimmers.However, some of these studies that reported significantly higher critical velocity values used short distancestests for its assessment, which could lead to the overestimation of the final results. It is suggested the use of theindividual critical velocity converted in 100m time to implement specific training series for aerobic capacitydevelopment, as well as for the more precise definition of training volumes and intensities. Thus, the usedcritical velocity test could be considered a useful training strategy used to increase swimmers conditioning