Maximum swimming performance as well as physiological and kinematic factors were analysed during different phases of the season.
This question matters because open-water athletes must develop endurance, technical efficiency and tactical skill simultaneously.
Diagnostics across the whole season
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A single test in winter may therefore not be enough to assess an athlete's development reliably.
Regularly repeated tests can show which performance characteristics remain stable and which change particularly strongly over the course of the season.
Season planning in open water is particularly complex
Open-water athletes need very high aerobic capacity while also coping with sharp changes of pace and finishing sprints. Technical and tactical demands are added, and these cannot be captured completely by classic pool tests.
It is therefore plausible that different performance factors do not develop in parallel over a season. An athlete may, for example, improve maximal aerobic performance while certain technical metrics temporarily worsen under high training load.
Diagnostics as longitudinal monitoring
The greatest benefit of repeated testing therefore lies less in a single value than in the trend. If identical test protocols are carried out at several points in time, it becomes possible to see whether a training phase is actually producing the intended adaptations.
Coaches should always interpret physiological data together with technical metrics. Higher speed with poorer efficiency can mean something different from an improvement in which speed and economy increase together.
Competition data also belong in this analysis. After all, open-water performance is not created in a test laboratory, but in a tactical race situation. The combination of diagnostics and race analysis therefore provides the most complete picture.
SCIENTIFIC SOURCE
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41672054/