Swimming in eyesight deprivation : relationships with sensory-perception, coordination and laterality

INTRODUCTION: Keeping the control of the direction during the displacement is important in swimming, particularly for backstroke and open water events. Sensory-perception, coordination and laterality can have relationships to the ability in swimming straight. The aim of this study was to analyse the relationships among sensory-perception abilities, eyesight, coordination and laterality in preserving a straight swim during the front crawl (FC), the backstroke (BA) and the breaststroke (BR). METHODS: 28 young swimmers participated in this study (10.8±1.3 years, 146.2±11.3 cm, 37.7±8.8 kg, arms span 148.7±13.5 cm). The trajectory of the swim without the sup-port of visual feedback was evaluated in 25m FC, BA and BR (three trials per stoke). The swimmers’ coordination and the leg dominance were evaluated through the a Sta-rosta’s Coordination test. Hildreth’s index showed the arm laterality and gliding tests were used to evaluate the swimmers’ sensory-perceptive skills. RESULTS: No relationships between strokes were found in blind swimming. No relationships were found between the coordination and the deviations in blind swimming. Gliding and Dive-gliding tests are strictly related to the blind swimming (R=-044, p<0.01, both). The 96.4% of the subjects was right hand dominant (RH) and 66.6% of them was left leg dominant (RH-LL). In the blind BR, RH-LL compared to the right leg dominant (RH-RL) showed a significant better score (7.88±2.49 vs 9.88±1.90 points, p<0.05). No differences were found in blind FC and BA. DISCUSSION: In absence of eyesight information, swimmers mainly deviate to the right in FC and BR, to the left in BA, probably depending on the swimming technique and to the hand dominance. Starosta’s test seems not to be useful alone to represent swimming coordi-nation, but shows the RH-LL dominance in about 70% of subjects. Gliding tests sup-port the relationship between sensory-perception and swimming management. RH-LL better manage the direction of swimming than RH-RL, supporting higher level of RH-LL performance than subjects with other kind of laterality. BR could be advisable to practice the balance during propulsive actions, better dealing with the control of the di-rection of swim displacements.