Effects of Agility Training on Breaststroke Swimming Performance

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to study and compare the effects of agility on breaststroke swimming performance.  The samples were 20 male swimming athletes derived by simple random sampling technique from Nakhon Si Thammarat Provincial Swimming Association, 2022 aging between 14-15 years old. They were equally divided into two groups by matching method; the experimental group and the control group. The experimental group practiced with the agility training program while the control group practice with the regular training program. Both groups were trained 3 days per week (on Monday, Wednesday and Friday) for 8 weeks. The ability on breaststroke swimming was tested two times before and after on the 4^th and 8^th weeks of the training. The results were analyzed by mean, standard deviation, t-test, and one-way analysis of variance with repeated measures. For pairwise test analysis, LSD post-hoc test was calculated with the statistically significant level at 0.05.

The results indicated that before the training there was no significant difference in breaststroke swimming performance between the two groups. However,  after the agility training program on the 4^th week and the 8^th week, the experimental group performed better on breaststroke swimming than did the control group at 0.05 level showing that the agility training resulted in better performance on breaststroke swimming.