Multi-year training (swimming, from childhood to adulthood) : literature paper

The development of the young swimmer determines the scientific approch of the training process organization. Thus the design of training programs for young swimmers requires to know the biological age, whose determination remains an invasive method. However, there are easy methods for determining biological age, such as that of Wutscherk (1988), whose formula is based on a few anthropometric parameters. But before the Peak Height Velocity (PVH) the trainers refer rather to the chronological age and do not make a difference between the training programs of the two sexes (Bayli, 2004). High-level sport requires 10 years of preparation, i.e. an average of 3 hours training per day (Bloom, 1985; Bloom et al., 1990; Ericsson, et al., 1993; Ericsson and Charness, 1994, Salmela et al., 1998). Experience has shown that the age of best swimming performances is 22 years for women and 24 years for men, and that they occur in middle distance swimmers on average two years earlier than in sprinters (Allen et al., 2014 ; Buhl et al., 2013 ; Kollarz et al., 2013 ; Wolfrum et al., 2013 ; Knechtle et al., 2016 ; König et al., 2014), by preparing the technical, physical and psychological aspects for 8 to 10 years for women and 8 to 12 years for men, in order to reach the international level, without reducing the aforementioned deadlines. In this article, we wanted to emphasize the importance of growth and maturation in planning and periodizing a swimmer's long-term training process.