A Study of Effect of Swimming on Breath Holding Time

-Introduction: swimming is a kind of sport which involves the movement of most of the muscle of human body in an environment different from other sports activity. Swimming is a kind of exercise which requires brief or long durations of breath holding in water. Aims and objective:-The purpose of this study was to find the effect of swimming on breath holding capacity of the swimmers. Approach: We carried out a comparative study of breath holding in swimmers of Ahmedabad city and the persons of sedentary life style. The data obtained were compiled, statistically analyzed and compared with the control group using unpaired‘t’ test. Results:-Our results showed statistically significant higher breath holding time in the swimmers than sedentary person. Conclusion: our study reaffirms the advantages of swimming; it is an advisable exercise to improve respiratory efficiency. Key-words: swimming, Breath holding Corresponding Author: Dr.Devanshi Upadhyaya, Plot no 1274/2, sector -7/D Gandhinagar gujarat-382007 email:devanshirj@gmail.com Introduction: Breathing technique is the most important part of swimming. Swimmers try to inhale after every three or four strokes. Jane Cappaert, a sports science bio-mechanist with the Olympic swimming team, says that swimmers will improve their training by staying underwater for as long as they can. “It will help them maximize their oxygen consumption from each breath” This is called hypoxic training and it seems to translate into better performance when a swimmer is low A study of effect of swimming on breath holding time on oxygen during a race or another hypoxic exercise is to swim freestyle, holding your breath for six strokes, then increasing it to seven, on up, in order to put you in that hypoxic state. Swimming is unique kind of exercise and a sport which is carried out in a different environmental condition than other forms. The effect of gravity, shifting of centre of mass of human body and the buoyancy of water play a major role. Human body by achieving muscular efficiencies naturally accomplish this act of swimming. Exercise like swimming is of low intensity but of long duration produces increase in the number of mitochondria in the muscle fibers that are recruited in it. In addition there is increase in the number of capillaries around these fibers. All such changes lead to increase in the capacity for endurance activity with minimum of fatigue. Swimming differs than other sports activity due to horizontal position of the body, higher amount of humidity, restricted ventilation under water and increased external pressure. Heat loss from the body is also very fast due to higher specific heat and conductivity of water. The pressure exposed to diaphragm is also greater during swimming than running. Considering these facts we tried to check the positive effect of swimming on breath holding capacity of the swimmer by comparing with those of the sedentary person. Material and Methods::In the present study 35 subjects selected were residents of Ahmedabad city who had been swimming for last 26 years or more, who routinely performed for 2-3 hours a day, minimum of 5 days a week. The study was carried out at the eklavya sports complex situated at thaltej, Ahmedabad before starting their routine warm up before swimming; i.e. in resting state. The control population was represented by untrained persons. All the subjects were male between the age group of 20 – 38 years. The subjects were explained the purpose and importance of study. Only those who were motivated consented and without past history and family history of Diabetes Mellitus, HTN, IHD, TB, Asthma etc. were included in the present study. Also the subjects were not having any personal history of tobacco and alcohol consumption. They were free from any disease and were not taking any medicine at the time of evaluation. With the similar criterion 35 male persons of same age group of Ahmedabad city who were not involved in any sports activity or regular daily exercise like walking, cycling, jogging etc. were taken as controls. A study of effect of swimming on breath holding time Proper clinical examination and anthropometric measurements were taken before starting the breath holding tests to avoid human error. All the participants were explained the methodology. Respiratory parameters were taken in the morning time 8 am to 10 am in the month of September-October 2015 to avoid diurnal variations. The subjects were instructed to perform following maneuvers using stop watch in sitting position. Breathe holding for the maximum duration which is possible i.e break point (unable to hold more than that). Breath holding was done after normal inspiration, normal expiration, maximal possible deep inspiration and maximal possible expiration. Recording was done using stop watch in seconds. The data was analysed using unpaired‘t’ test and the results were consider statistically significant where p values were less than 0.001. Result: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 swimmers age 26 43 24 30 32 38 29 41 39 45 49 30 39 44 33 39 47 38 29 43 37 36 32 47 26 36 27 37 21 38 30 37 27 33 39 swimmers hieght 18 15 18 16 16 16 17 17 18 17 15 17 18 16 16 17 16 17 16 16 17 17 17 17 17 17 16 17 18 17 17 17 16 16 17 swimmers weight 76 78 76 72 63 83 67 75 10 79 94 66 65 78 56 86 58 10 55 61 82 87 72 74 78 74 86 78 94 92 66 65 75 56 86 control age 27 24 24 30 28 29 48 47 44 45 32 47 34 18 38 39 45 39 42 45 31 48 46 50 44 29 34 36 34 31 42 34 24 38 39 control hieght 16 17 17 17 17 17 16 16 17 16 16 18 18 17 17 17 17 16 18 17 17 16 17 16 16 16 17 17 17 17 16 18 16 17 17 conrol weight 64 67 59 68 79 73 73 61 72 72 64 77 99 80 10 84 86 81 78 83 83 11 73 80 71 59 89 82 84 72 74 99 65 10 84 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 hi ei gh t i n cm , a ge in y ea rs , w ei gh t i nk g anthropometric measurments 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 swimmers control 45.7