Introduction
Welcome to the 8th edition of the FINA
Sports Medicine Newsletter!
As you know, the FINA Sports Medicine
Newsletter is an electronic publication of the
FINA Sports Medicine Committee (SMC). This
publication can be received via email or
accessed via the FINA Sports Medicine Web
Pages on the FINA website ( www.fina.org). The
objective of the FINA Sports Medicine
Newsletter is to enhance communication with
the aquatic health care team around the world
and to promote education in the field of
aquatic sports medicine and sport science.
This edition of the FINA Sports Medicine
will review the following topics:
- The new SMC for term of 2013-2017
- FINA Sports Medicine Video - Prevention
of Shoulder Injuries in Aquatics Sports
- 17th FINA World Sports Medicine
Congress – Instanbul, Turkey, December 2012.
Bleasdale Memorial Lecture - The Olympics
and Protecting the Health of the Athlete -
Dr Richard Budgett
- Medical Corner of Aquatics World
Magazine: Mental health and the aquatic
athlete – An overview of sport psychiatry
- FINA Sports Medicine Updates : Periodic
Health Evaluation
- WADA updates
The
new SMC for the period 2013-2017
The first meeting of the FINA newly appointed
Bureau for the period 2013-2017 took place in
Barcelona (ESP), and was highlighted by several
decisions including nomination of the FINA
Committees for the period 2013-2017.
[ Read ]
Prevention
of Shoulder Injuries in Aquatics
This video is a tool that was developed to be
used by all aquatic athletes to decrease the
incidence of shoulder injuries in aquatic
sports. It was first released at the London,
Olympics, July 2012. The target audience is
athletes, coaches, team physicians and other
members of the health care team in the athlete
entourage. For more information on the video
and to watch the video please go to our website
sportsmed.fina.org
Bleasdale
Memorial Lecture - The Olympics and Protecting
the Health of the Athlete - Dr Richard Budg
Dr Richard Budgett, the new Medical and
Scientific Director of the International
Olympic Committee presented the 2012 Bleasdale
Memorial Lecture entitled “The Olympics and
Protecting the Health of the Athlete”. His
address outlined the health focus of the IOC
both at Olympic Games and throughout sport and
was well received.
See this lecture on our youtube channel
Mental
Health and the Aquatic Athlete – “An Overview
of Sport Psychiatry”
The mind-body relationship has long been
recognised as an important component of
overall health and wellbeing. With the aquatic
athlete facing ever increasing levels of both
physical and mental stress, by being better
aware of an athlete’s mental health, one can
see an enhancement in performance outcomes.
Although the public has great interest for
athletic achievements, the emotional strains
brought on by such “heroic moments” have
obtained little attention until the last two
decades. More recently there has been an
increasing interest in the interface between
sport and mental health. This has led to the
origin of the medical sub-specialty, Sport
Psychiatry.
Sport Psychiatry made its defining entry
into the scientific literature in May of 1992,
in the American Journal of Psychiatry, in a
paper titled “An Overview of Sport Psychiatry”
by Dr. Daniel Begel. As a medical specialty,
psychiatry has been recognised since the
middle of the nineteenth century. Dr. Begel
defined sport psychiatry as the implementation
of psychiatric knowledge and treatment methods
to the world of sport. Over time there have
been more and more papers in the scientific
literature and presentations at international
scientific conferences on the subject. Recent
research shows that the prevalence of mental
health issues in athletes to be as high as in
the normal population. In the past it was
believed that because athletes are,
“emotionally very strong people” mental
disorders did not exist in athletes at the
elite level.
[
Read ]
FINA
Sports Medicine Updates: Periodic Health
Evaluation
The FINA SMC recommends a periodic health
evaluation for all aquatic athletes who are
members of National Teams. You can read more
about the PHE and download the form here
WADA
Updates
FINA is currently well-represented on WADA
Committees and we are in a privileged position
to make comment on several important issues.
1. The Prohibited List:
Prof Andrew Pipe is Chair of the List
Committee and has reminded all aquatic
stakeholders of the opportunity to comment on
the proposed changes to the List that will
come into effect on 1 January 2014. There have
been few significant changes to the current
prohibited list and the sentiments of the FINA
fraternity have already been presented in an
official submission.
2. Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE):
Prof David Gerrard currently chairs the
WADA TUE Expert Group and has endorsed the
need for all physicians supporting TUE
applications on behalf of athletes to ensure
that these meet the required standards. Dr.
Margo Mountjoy is also a member of this
committee. TUE applications that are not
supported by thorough clinical evidence will
be denied and in the interests of our
athletes, physicians are encouraged to ensure
that the TUE guidelines are met. Information
to assist in the TUE application process may
be downloaded from the WADA website.
3. World Conference on Doping in Sport:
This critical meeting is to be hosted in
Johannesburg on 13-15 November 2013 and will
attract world-wide attention as the forum for
approving the new WADA Code. This document
that has undergone international review over
the past 18 months forms the basis of all
anti-doping strategy and FINA has been a key
signatory to the Code that applies to all
aquatic disciplines.
4. Athlete Biological Passport (ABP):
This WADA initiative enables international
federations to build a haematological profile
of its elite athletes. FINA has demonstrated
leadership in this regard by obtaining samples
from a large cohort of athletes who competed
recently at the Barcelona World Championships.
The process received the co-operation of
athletes and their coaches and the ABP is
another important tool in the fight against
drug misuse in sport.
FINA
Sports Medicine Newsletter Sign-up feature
The FINA SMC would like to remind you of the
FINA Sports Medicine Newsletter “sign-up”
feature. For those interested in receiving the
FINA Sports Medicine Newsletter, a “sign-up”
option to receive the publication can be found
on the FINA Sports Medicine Web Pages
(sportsmed.fina.org). Please inform your
colleagues, coaches and allied health care
professionals of this new option.
[ Read ]
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AM RPIMIT ACEST EMAIL
Andrew...
Check out www.gamesgimmickschallenges/stroke gear for a picture of the tubing/paddles.
The term balance is commonly used in swimming but does not really describe dynamic balance or first-class leverage as Bill intended. Below is the meaning of balance in swimming as told to me by Professor Bill Boomer’...
Balance is a sensitivity that can be developed statically or dynamically. A swimming stroke could have vertical, horizontal and even rotational balance.
What naturally happens to your body in the water when you hold your breath and do nothing, when you just hang there and float? Some peoples' bodies will assume a low-hanging, almost vertical, dead man's float.
Obviously, the nearly vertical dead man's float and those positions in between are not very streamlined, as gravity pulls the heaviest parts of your body downward.
You will find that the most buoyant part of your body is between your armpits and the heaviest part is somewhere around the belt buckle. You have the choice about what floats and you need to counteract the force of gravity to bring your body into a relaxed, streamlined position, without using heartbeats (kicking) to do it.
Think of your body as a long lever arm like a see saw. The length of the balancing line in the lever system of your body runs from the point of your extended finger tips to your extended toes and includes your head/spine line.
A see saw is in balance when both ends are unsupported, stabilized, and motionless. The equation does not require equal lengths and weights on both sides of the balancing point. To balance, you need equal products: the relationships between length and weight.
The same conditions apply to the human body when trying to balance. To accomplish this, you need to be able to shift your center of mass towards your center of flotation.
This necessitates that you connect the product of the weight and length of your hips and legs on one side of the see saw to the following on the other side:
The product of the weight and length of your arms
The weight of your head
A downward pressure on the head/chest unit
The closer these two points, the less potential torque is in your system.
Creating and understanding this balanced system will eliminate the need to kick your body into a streamlined position. It also gives you a more stable base or platform from which to freely direct your arms.
In freestyle swimming, this establishes a rhythm line where the cycling rhythm (stroke rate) can originate at your hips - a critical condition for being able to change velocities in freestyle swimming.
When you swim you have subconsciously adjusted your kick, shifted your head weight, or used your leading hand/arm unit (platforming) to counterbalance technique errors. You have had to do this because your rhythm center has been located in your hands.
Wrong! If pace changes occur in the force-creating units (hands and feet) it will destroy the balance rhythm and posture; it puts the 'cart before the horse!'
Freestyle rhythm changes occur at your hips... and they never interfere with your balance or posture. You will need to evaluate the impact of any such change on your entire body - your hips, your head, your legs, your arms - as that change impacts your balance rhythm and posture.
We all have a natural rhythm to our stroke and that rhythm manifests itself along our balancing line which includes the head/spine and hips if we are to create this rhythm line.
We can then marry our own balance line (head-spine line) to our rhythm line and direct our energies outward towards our hands and feet, the force creators. Our hips will not bounce, our hands will not sweep out, and we will not need to crossover kick to compensate for our head every time we breathe.
.
As you know, the Shoulder Driven technique is normally utilised by sprinters but, I have seen Lotte Friis and David Davis use this technique during their 1500m swims. It requires the swimmer to have a quicker catch of their entry hand and a quicker release... thus, creating more arm strokes but with less time to rotate the hips.
Therefore, not as much power can be generated off each arm pull, but since there are so many more of them, it is the frequency that makes up the difference. Usually the shoulder rotates more than the hips with this technique, thus the name.
The best way to explain the technique that Bill and Milt are recommending can be thought of as a like walking...
When we walk or run, we basically anchor our foot down onto the ground and swing our body and our centre of mass past this fixed anchoring point. We then place our other foot down anchor it to the ground then swing the other side of our body past this new anchor.
The idea is for the swimmer to drop their arm into the water, anchor it onto the water then via rotation of the swimmers lower core combined with the swinging action of the other arm... swing themselves over that anchor, release it then placing another anchor down with our other arm. They then repeat these processes down the length of the pool.
This type of freestyle becomes potentially a very light stroke that utilizes the forces of Mother Nature – gravity and momentum that combine together with the rotary power of our mass over our anchor point.
This means that the technique Bill is teaching around the world is very much a Top side dominated stroke, because he wants the swimmer to utilize the mass of their body that rotates and falls into the water coupled with the mass of their arm swinging over into the water to transfer through their body to the established anchor as we they over it.
The recovery side (Top side) of the stroke utilizes the free energy from gravity and momentum that can be used on the Low side by maintaining the weight of the swimmers arm in the Front Quadrant whilst swimming. The swimmer will thus have a greater ability to balance in the water.
Watch this video of Shelly Ripple with the late Richard Quick of Stanford... after showing and telling the viewer why a swimmer should not use the 'Zipper Drill" Shelly swims a few laps full stroke emphasising all the above points
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxKK7Wed9jg