Physiological characteristics of primary school children enrolled in accelerated swimming training

Swimming has a positive effect on the functional status of children. Swimming is an exercise, that promotes the growth of the child, because when a person is swimming in partial gravity in the horizontal position, the spine is temporarily discharged from its usual gravitational forces. However, the positive effect of swimming lessons can be achieved only with the proper organization of the training process, which is especially important for children of primary school in the initial training. Currently, there are many programs of accelerated swimming training aimed at training young athletes in a short time. A team of trainers has developed such a program for primary school children in Sports School № 8 in Tomsk, adapted to the conditions the sports school offers. The available literature does not have enough information about the physiology of the organism of young athletes involved in the program of accelerated swimming training, despite the large number of similar programs. Therefore the purpose of this study was to identify physiological characteristics of primary school children enrolled in accelerated swimming training. The study was conducted in the city of Tomsk in Sports School № 8 of swimming in the period from October 2011 to February 2012 in groups of the first year of initial training. The experiment involved 22 children aged 7-8 with the doctor's permission to swim. The children were divided into two groups: control and experimental. The control group of 10 people enrolled in A.A. Kashkin Program, which is standard for teaching children to swim at the initial stage of training. The experimental group of 12 people enrolled in the accelerated swimming training, developed by a team of trainers of Sports School № 8. As a result, children of the experimental group showed better results in terms of the level of physical development (indicator of dynamometry, life index, Erisman's index, chest excursion) than the control group children. Mathematical processing of the data revealed a statistically significant difference. According to the results of the orthostatic test the growth rate in the experimental group was higher than in the control one. According to the results of Rufe test in the control group the increase was large, but statistically significant differences were found. Thus, based on these results, we can conclude that the children engaged in the program of accelerated swimming training are ahead of their peers involved in the standard program by the level of development of functional systems.

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