Abstract

OLIVEIRA, Thiago A. Costa de et al. The spatiotemporal constraint on the swimmer’s decision-making of turning. Motri. [online]. 2014, vol.10, n.3, pp.90-98. ISSN 1646-107X.  https://doi.org/10.6063/motricidade.10(3).3052.

This study investigated the swimmer’s decision-making process for turning, based on spatiotemporal informational variables. The men and women 50-metre front crawl and backstroke events were selected and analyzed using TACTO software. Participants included 120 adults of both genders aged between 20 and 70 years. The distance to the pool wall at which the swimmers initiated the turn was analyzed with regards to velocity and variability of previous displacement. These factors were split into four groups adopting, quartiles as the cut-off points. Results showed that for all conditions, the swimmers who showed a higher velocity and a lower variability of displacement decided to initiate the turn at a greater distance to the pool wall. Furthermore, the greater distance seemed to be associated with a more successful performance. These results suggest that swimmers should be attuned to spatiotemporal and spatial information in order to maximize their performance.

Keywords : turn of swimming; spatiotemporal constraint; decision-making.

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