Swimming
is the sport where competitive spirit and health are perfectly united. Not occasionally
it is mostly suggested to the youth. This discipline involves in harmony and
symmetry the musculature of the whole body: both the lower and upper limbs,
improving sensibly the respiratory capacities and the activity of the cardiovascular
system. Moreover, at early age it favours the learning and the co-ordination
capacities in suggesting tasks that differ according to the style and the difficulty
of floating, depending on the tasks that are given to the upper part or the
lower part of the body. The body of swimmers appears to have perfect proportions
with developed and tapering muscle masses. The energetic waste caused by under
water movements is remarkable and the power of the arms must be completely adequate
to the sophisticated technique of the technical motor gesture appropriate to
avoid useless fatigue. Our opinion is that the only flaw of this sport lies
in the repetitiveness of training methods which are during most part of the
year, in a swimming pool, indoor. The dry activity of the training programmes
is becoming an essential part of the preparation, but it is obvious that the
major work is done under water. Electrostimulation could not only be a valid
help to improve the physical aspects useful to the swimmer, but also an excellent
means to diversify training tables, making them more varied and introducing
an innovating element in the usual range of proposed exercises. The specific
card offers numerous programmes ranging from muscle strengthening to improving
the aerobic capacities, according to the demands both to improve the performance
regarding short distances and long distances. Also in this case, we suggest
to integrate the training that can be exercised using electrostimulation in
the general annual programme studied around the table “ad personam”. It is possible
to personalise a training even more, stimulating single muscle districts that,
according to the trainer, are less-developed compared to the capacities of the
swimmer or that cannot be developed well with the normal training method. In
other words, pushing more rapidly the construction times of a certain physical
aspect in function of an important event “adding” the work with electrostimulation
to the traditional work in the sports centre and swimming pool. From an exclusively
medical point of view, the pathologies of the swimmer, are definitely inferior
to those of other athletes, as swimming is one of the “softest” sports. Anyway,
even rarely, also the sports centre makes the swimmer suffer from irritating
inflammations of tendons and from pain in the joints. Therefore on the specific
card are included Tens currents to cure the most usual misfortunes that the
athletes encounter in races of more or less higher level.