Comparative analysis of three energy drink consumption timings on front crawl performance of collegiate swimmers

The study aimed to compare three energy drink timings on the front crawl performance of 60 collegiate swimmers selected through purposive sampling. Specifically, participants consist of 30 females (50%) and 30 males (50%) equally distributed across three groups—Group 30, Group 40, and Group 1h—each containing ten females (16.67%) and ten males (16.67%), making up 33.33% of the total participants per group. Group 30 includes the participants who have 30 minutes of energy drink consumption timing prior to the testing. Group 40 has 40 minutes of energy drink consumption timing. Lastly, Group 1h includes the participants with an hour as their consumption timing. The study's instrument consists of a time trial of 50m, 800m, and 1500m front crawl performance recorded using a handheld stopwatch. The data gathering commenced after 30 hours of caffeine cessation for the participants. After this, each participant consumed a commercially available energy drink. The different energy drink consumption timings were implemented before administering the front crawl performances. Another 30 hours were observed to wash out the effects of the prior testing. The second testing commenced with the same protocol until the three front crawl performances were done. The data from the time trials were analyzed for differences through the Kruskal-Wallis H test. The between-group comparison of all participants for front crawl performance showed no significant differences in 50m, 800m, or 1500m events (P > .05). Similarly, male participants exhibited no significant differences across groups in all events, with P values for 50m, 800m, and 1500m events being (.90), (.17), and (.35), respectively. Female participants also showed no significant differences between groups, with P values of (.69), (.65), and (.31) for the 50m, 800m, and 1500m events, respectively. The study found no significant difference in the effects of consuming energy drinks at 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and 1 hour on 50m, 800m, and 1500m front crawl swimming performance, regardless of the swimmers' sex. Future studies were suggested to replicate the study for validation.