Principal Technique Components for Young Swimmers Evaluation. Enhancing the Free Observation Method

The study aims to identify, weight, and highlight the mistakes in the four swimming strokes through a technique evaluation tool for young swimmers that can accurately calculate swimming technique scores, taking into account the significance of each mistake. A total of 86 regional-level young swimmers (48 boys and 38 girls), aged from 8 to 12 years old, and training experience of 5.4 (1.7) years, participated in the study. Participants performed 15 m of each one of the swimming strokes (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and front crawl), and were evaluated by two swimming coaches with the Technique Papadimitriou (Tec Pa) tool. A principal component analysis for categorical data (CATPCA) was selected to evaluate the weight of the 12 most significant technical points for all strokes. The range of loads, for the 12 technique spots, in the butterfly stroke was from 0.50-0.75, for backstroke from 0.47-0.68, for breaststroke from 0.51-0.80, and for front - crawl 0.31-0.74, with a Cronbach's Alpha value on 0.91, 0.88, 0.92 and 0.87 for each stroke, respectively. Considering the analysis, swimming coaches can easily implement a swimming technique evaluation for their swimmers without any expensive equipment, complicated systems, or computer applications.