Sports Medicine & Science presentations

Finally, how about something on the physiology of aging endurance and sprint capacity--and anything proven to slow down the deterioration (or perhaps even override it?) This might not be of tremendous interest to the 40 year old and younger swimmers, but it becomes of increasing interest in later age groups. Us young swimmers should care about this too. We want to be young and beautiful forever. And humble. Pinot Noir is good but how about Cab Sav. Let's not discriminate. Joking aside, it would be interesting to see the effects of alcohol on recovery and peak training performance. And I don't mean beer relays.

Jane, I saw this article today and the subject is probably of interest to all of us (competitors and non-competitors): slowing the aging process. Link to article: news.yahoo.com/.../12bummersofagingboomerscanavoid 12 Bummers of Aging Boomers Can Avoid By Deborah Kotz U.S. News & World Report Mon Feb 2, 4:42 pm ET "....Your chronological age doesn't necessarily correlate with how old your body thinks it is, says Michael Roizen, chair of the Cleveland Clinic's Wellness Institute and coauthor of YOU: Staying Young. "There are about 191 things that go into calculating your real age," he says, "and 149 of those things are within your control to change...."

Poor technique can cause shoulder problems. It's not intuitive exactly what that poor technique is. Do some of the stroke modifications make shoulders healthier but won't let you swim as fast ? Pictures would be good.

Jane, I saw this article today and the subject is probably of interest to all of us (competitors and non-competitors): slowing the aging process. Link to article: news.yahoo.com/.../12bummersofagingboomerscanavoid "A chemical in red wine ... offers the same SIRT1-boosting benefits ... people would need to drink 100 to 1,000 bottles of red wine a day to get enough." Well, it's a goal... :)

Thanks to everyone for some great ideas. We are working on finding a way to post presentations so they will be available at any time to all members of USMS, not just the few who attend national championship meets and convention. Those are convenient venues for presentations. We hope to be able to post lots of good information and videos eventually. Jane Moore

Prevalence of atrial fibrillation among Masters swimmers. Incidence of sudden cardiac death among Masters swimmers. USMS has the potential to create a large database that could enhance our understanding of cardiovascular disease among Masters athletes. I suggested this to Rob a few years ago.

www.usaswimming.org On the coaches tab, there are some very good resources on sports medicine and exercise physiology. Besides the other items mentioned, I don't believe much research has been done in the area of hormone levels, aging and performance. Personally, I'm getting more and more cranky as I get older. I'm swimming about the same times as I did ten years ago - but that can be chalked up to rule changes and swim suit "enhancements". P

This goes along with gull's I think. How do you safely raise your heart before a race. Points to cover should include how much time between elevating the heart rate and the race can occur before additional warm up is needed, how to elevate the heart rate safely in the water, and how to elevate the heart rate safely when a water based warm up is not an option.

Prevalence of atrial fibrillation among Masters swimmers. Incidence of sudden cardiac death among Masters swimmers. USMS has the potential to create a large database that could enhance our understanding of cardiovascular disease among Masters athletes. I suggested this to Rob a few years ago. This February, Steven Blair, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina presented their findings on swimming and mortality based on the 32-yearAerobics Center Longitudinal Study ((ACLS), which has followed the health and activity levels of 40,000 adult men, aged 20-90. What the most recent analysis showed is that regular swimming for exercise cuts a man's risk of dying by nearly 50 percent compared to walking or remaining sedentary. Perhaps even more surprising, swimmers also had significantly lower mortality than runners. 1. It might be good to get Dr. Blair to make a presentation. He's a pretty big name in exercise physiology--the guy who found that fitness is more important that fatness in cardiac risk, for instance. 2. I think your idea, Gull, about using USMS data to study swimming and cardiac problems (as well as other diseases and conditions that increase with age) is a great one. You might want to talk to Mary Sweat, impressario of the Go the Distance program, which is slowly accumulating a ton of data on distance swum and (starting this year) time swum. Paul Williams of the National Runners Health Study has been collecting data on runner for decades now, and this could be an excellent model for a longitudinal swimming study. One of the interesting aspects of our sport is that for those of us who actually write our workouts down, there is no guesstimating involved--the data of when we swim, how much we swim, and to a large extent the intensity involved is not subject to recall bias--it's collected after every practice. 3. Finally, I think that the vast majority of USMS members would be glad to participate in a longitudinal health study. I, for one, would be more than happy to give a blood sample, for instance, at nationals or a regional meet, fill out questionaires, etc. Ransom Arthur, the patron saint of the masters movement, did studies at the very first nationals more or less designed to show that adults who competed very, very vigorously were not inviting the Grim Reaper into their widowmaker arteries. He showed, if anything, that the precisely the opposite was the case. Anyhow, perhaps you, Jane, Jim Miller, and other physicians in the masters ranks could send out a letter to leading exercise physiology/sports medicine/and related residency programs nationwide, letting the research community know that we have a huge and burgeoning group of test subjects willing to donate our data to those interested in mining it!

What the most recent analysis showed is that regular swimming for exercise cuts a man's risk of dying by nearly 50 percent compared to walking or remaining sedentary. I'm pretty sure the risk of dying is stable at 100 percent.