The Effect of Competition Specific Auditory Stimulus Dive Training on Swimming Start Reaction Time: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Abstract

A competitive swimming start shares similar auditory starting stimuli with that of an athletics track start, yet despite there being some research on reaction time (RT) training in athletics sprinting, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding RT training for swimming starts. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of competition specific auditory stimuli, compared to dive training without auditory stimuli, on the RTs of male sub-elite adolescent swimmers. It was hypothesised that auditory stimulus dive training can significantly improve swimming start RT and potentially bridge the previously found performance gap in RTs between sub-elite and elite level swimmers. Ten NSW state level swimmers (14.0 ± 1.4years) were randomly allocated into two four week dive training programs; dive training without auditory stimulus (Cohort 1: C1, n=5) or competition specific auditory stimulus dive training (C2, n=5). Swimmers’ RT (≥ 0.100s), block time (BT) and ‘time to 15m’ were measured pre- and post-intervention using an instrumented starting block, with a custom made force measurement device (1000Hz), and a high speed camera (96Hz). Pre- and post-intervention results from all three parameters were compared to those of a group of six male elite level (Australian open national level) swimmers (C3) (19.8 ± 1.0years). A significant Time by Group interaction (p = .005) indicated that competition specific auditory stimulus dive training resulted in faster participant RTs in response to the auditory ‘go’ signal when compared with regular dive training. C2 had significantly faster post- than pre-intervention RT results (p = .028), whereby the cohort mean RT reduced by 0.012s and the mean cohort effect size was of ‘large’ (d ≥ ± 0.8) magnitude (d = -.99). C1 had a slower mean cohort RT from pre- to post-intervention, which approached statistical significance (p = .098) and a ‘large’ mean cohort effect size (d = .74). There were no significant differences in C3’s pre-intervention RTs and C2’s pre-intervention (p = .377) or post-intervention RTs (p = .766). However, C3 had significantly faster BTs than C1 (p = .016) and C2 (p = .048) pre-intervention. Neither of the two dive training interventions revealed statistically significant changes to BT or ‘time to 15m’ post-intervention. The present study demonstrates that auditory stimulus training can improve the RT of swimmers to the starting signal. However, this contribution to performance is small relative to the other components of ‘time to 15m’; BT, flight time and underwater time. Further research is required to investigate the effect of auditory stimulus training with elite level swimmers, especially those competing in short distance events, and other sports such as athletics.