Variation vs. specialization: the dose-time-effect of technical and physiological variety in the development of elite swimmers

Abstract Objective It is heavily discussed whether larger variety or specialization benefit elite performance at peak age. Therefore, this study aimed to determine technical (number of different swimming strokes) and physiological (number of different race distances) variety required to become an international-class swimmer (> 750 swimming points) based on 1′522′803 race results. Results Correlation analyses showed lower technical variety in higher ranked swimmers (P