BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Biomechanics and Control of Human Movement
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1588758
The metronome-guided training speeds up the adaptation of the aerobic training pace in swimming
Provisionally accepted
- University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
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Swimmers often use metronomes during training, but their effectiveness in learning a new swimming pace is unclear. Adapting motor skills to new timing is complex and occurs in stages. This study investigated these stages by assessing the ability of swimmers to reproduce a learned pace without a metronome. Twenty-four participants were divided into two groups. The Main group completed four days of training/testing and three followup days. Each training day included a 100m front crawl trial without a metronome, followed by three: 2x100m training sets with metronome synchronization and a further 100m test without the metronome. Performance measures were total 100m time, 25m lap times, temporal errors over 100m (Err100) and 25m (Err25), and the coefficient of variation of Err25 (CV). The Control group followed the same protocol but only for two days.Results showed that in the Main group, Err100, Err25, and CV improved after the first training day and remained consistent throughout the week. Notably, Err25 and CV improvements persisted up to ten days post-training. The Control group showed no improvement after two days. These results suggest that metronome-guided training effectively helps swimmers adapt their pace to new motor timing, with effects lasting up to ten days.
Keywords: Metronome, pacing, Swimming, Learning, Motor Timing, training
Received: 06 Mar 2025; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fassone, Puce, Biggio, Avanzino, Bove and Bisio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marco Bove, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
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