Effects of men's swimsuits on swimming position and muscle activity of body trunk in gliding motion

Abstract

The objective of this study was to clarify the effects of men's swimsuits on swimming position and muscle activity of body trunk in gliding motion. For this objective, a swimming experiment to measure electromyogram and gliding position in sagittal plane simultaneously was conducted for 3 types of men's swimsuit (A, B and C). Next, we compared experimental results one-on-one between the swimsuits by ANOVA. The results of the experiment and ANOVA showed that in wearing Swimsuit C, compared to Swimsuits A and B, hip became lower to shoulder (P<0.05), the hip joint became more extended (P<0.05), and the muscle activity of ES (Erector Spinae) and drag coefficient had tendency to decrease. In addition, we established a new index for the effect of body trunk support, which corresponds to the muscle activity of ES considering the change in the hip joint angle. We confirmed statistically that Swimsuit C had effects of extending hip joint and/or reducing the muscle activity of ES (p<0.05). The reason for this was considered to be that the high tension of Swimsuit C helped the hip extensor muscles. © 2012 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.