Anthropometrical and physiological profile of Malaysian University Swimmers

• Main Author: Yasin, Mohd Nawawi
• Format: Monograph
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Sains Malaysia 2013
• Subjects: Q1-390 Science (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.usm.my/56275/1/MOHD%20NAWAWI%20BIN%20YASIN%20-%20e.pdf; http://eprints.usm.my/56275/
• Institution: Universiti Sains Malaysia

Swimming belongs to one of the most prestigious Olympic sports. Belonging to Aquatics, Swimming along with Diving, Water Polo and Synchronized Swimming, has one of the largest medal hauls at stake in the Olympic Games. Swimming events include freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly, medleys and relays altogether counting a massive 34 sets of medals in the current Olympics programme. In the last two decades swimming turned into highly scientific and sophisticated sport, with scientists from all fields of knowledge contributing to the improvement of swimming performance. Swimmers’ physical characteristics have been examined to determine the characteristics of successful sprint and endurance swimmers (Smith et al., 2002) in order to assess the relative importance of specific characteristics to performance. Although research into the anthropometry and physiology of swimmers is substantial, no studies to date have been found analyzing anthropometrical and physiological profile of Malaysian University swimmers. With all this in mind, MOHE-USM Swimming Centre of Excellence initiated profiling of Malaysian University level swimmers and development of locally applicable norms and standards. The purpose in this study was to describe and compare anthropometrical profiles of male and female University swimmers, and also analyze the differences between sprinters and middle and long distance swimmers within the genders of Malaysian elite university swimmers. A convenience sample subjects were 11 males and 14 females from among three top finishers in the events of Kamival Sukan Majlis Sukan Universiti Malaysia (MASUM) in 2011. Data was collected through personal particulars sheet and anthropometrical measurements including: height, weight, arms span, sitting height, shoulder width, pelvic width and foot length. Among physiological variables were: BM1, body fat percentage, grip strength for right and left hand. Descriptive statistics was performed to display means and standard deviation through both genders, type of event in respect to swimming distance for both genders. The mean values of variables in height (171.15 ± 4.58) , weight (65.13± 7.95) , arm span (177.10± 8.42), sitting height (88.74 ± 1.83), foot length (25.03 ± 1.26), shoulder width (41.15± 1.78), right hand grip (40.88 ± 7.18) and left hand grip (39.06 ± 9.10), in males were significantly higher than in females except in fat percentage (24.04 ± 2.77) where females were significantly higher in values than males, whereas in BMI, and in pelvic width results were almost same between genders. There are certain differences observed between sprint and middle & long distance among males, but none of them occured to be statistically significant. Certain differences were observed between sprint and middle & long distance swimmers in female section, but none of them happened to be statistically significant.