Ilka Staub’s research while affiliated with Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln and other places

Background: Physical inactivity and drowning are two of the leading causes of death worldwide. While participation in aquatic physical activity can help reduce these public health challenges, it is crucial to equip young people with key water skills through a well-designed aquatic curriculum to protect them from drowning and engage them in the long term in aquatic physical activities. This study reports on the development of a tool to analyse aquatic curricula for 6-to-12-year-olds in Europe, addressing both aquatic health issues. Methods: Using a three-round Delphi method, 101 participants from eight European countries - including experts in teaching, organising and researching aquatic education - were asked to rate the relevance of criteria conceptualised through Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. Results: 115 criteria were retained and grouped into eight categories: (1) curriculum management, (2) drowning epidemiology, (3) timetable, (4) location and equipment, (5) staff, (6) content, (7) assessment and (8) learners. The strong consensus on most of the criteria suggests that promoting physical activity and water safety are compatible goals. Conclusion: A well-designed aquatic curriculum, rooted in each level of the ecological model and organised through a multisystemic approach, can successfully achieve both objectives. The findings provide valuable insights for the design of aquatic safety promotion policies, as well as guidance for educators and policy makers to improve teaching strategies to increase physical activity while preventing drowning accidents.

Learning to swim promotes lifelong engagement in aquatic physical activity. Such engagement is defined as one of the six interventions identified by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2017) and is frequently considered to be prominent among those (Brenner et al., 2006; Stallman et al., 2014; WHO, 2014). The WHO emphasizes the importance of swimming and water safety, highlighting the alarming statistics of 320,000 drowning deaths annually making it the ‘3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide’ (WHO, 2020a). Experts, in fact, estimate that the real annual drowning incidence may be 2-3 times greater, or even more i.e., perhaps over one million (Peden et al., 2008), more than the annual burden of death by HIV related causes (WHO, 2020b) and nearly the same as the number of traffic deaths (WHO, 2018). Education is an integral part of learn-to-swim. Children’s books in general share everyday knowledge and can, therefore, help to partly educate our children, since the connection between learning to swim and reading is greater than expected. Strouse et al. (2018, p. 4) suggest ‘particular features of picture books […] may influence children’s tendency to learn and to transfer the educational content to real-world situations’, which will be examined by this study. Learning to swim is a common subject of children’s books. How the reader is influenced in what should be learned, is objective of this article. Thus, this pilot study aims (a) to assess to which extent children’s books convey the chosen criterion (i.e., Water Competence (WC)), (b) to evaluate which of the essential elements are most and least often included in the selected books, (c) to explore how both text and illustrations are used and (d) an attempt to create a model from which future research may be more broadly and inclusively conducted. By means of a descriptive analysis, the content of children’s books is compared with criteria from expert literature. The tentative results suggest that books show a great variation among criterion, if included, in text, illustrations and added material. The knowledge about swimming mediated by this genre may not be sufficient to educate safety and prevention to society.

Relative age effects (RAE) refer to a skewed distribution with an overrepresentation of athletes born close to the selection date. The prevalence of RAE has been repeatedly demonstrated in youth swimming. Additionally, being more mature within an age group is associated with consistent selection advantages. The present study aims to determine (1) the prevalence and magnitude of RAE in youth swimming and (2) the relation to anthropometry and biological maturity status. The study included 650 swimmers (male n = 273, age 11.00 ± 1.27 years; female n = 377, age 11.00 ± 1.25 years). The dates of birth were split into four birth quartiles (Q). The maturity status was assessed using equations to estimate the age of peak height velocity (APHV). χ ² tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for statistical analyses. The χ ² tests have shown significant RAE with medium effect sizes (ES; p < 0.001, 0.18 < V < 0.20) for male and female athletes. Also, the results have shown significant RAE with medium effect sizes (ES; p < 0.001, 0.18 < V < 0.20). ANOVA has not revealed significant differences regarding body height, body mass, and APHV between the four birth quartiles for both sexes, except for body mass in female athletes ( p = 0.037). The findings indicate that maturity status and anthropometry influence RAE in youth swimming. It can be assumed that relatively younger swimmers can counteract their disadvantage only by similar anthropometric and maturity-related characteristics to the relatively older swimmers, which significantly impacts talent identification and development of swimmers.

Epidemiological reports on physical inactivity (Guthold et al., 2020) and drowning accidents (WHO, 2014) show that the 6-12-year-old population are not protected to take advantage of the aquatic environment as an opportunity to practice in the water environment while they are lifelong activities (Chase et al., 2008). To carry this dual aquatic safety-health issue, the ALFAC project (co-funded by the European Union) aims to set European benchmarks of the level of aquatic competencies to engage in this environment safely and sustainably. To achieve this goal, 3 combine tests have been created. First, we created a psycho-social and cognitive questionnaires inspired by the scientific literature in physical literacy and drowning prevention to assess perceived skills (D'Hondt et al., 2021), motivation during lessons and risk management (De Martelaer et al., 2022) in and out of the aquatic environment. Then, we used an isolated skills assessment based on protective skills (Stallman et al., 2017). Finally, an adaptive aquatic 'parcours' based on constraints dynamics (Newell et al. 1986) to assess the capability to combine different aquatic tasks. This test battery will be administered to approximately 2,000 children in each of the 7 European partner countries (France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Norway and Lithuania) in order to create the first European database of the level of aquatic literacy of children aged 6 to 12 per country and per group-age (6-7, 8-9, 10-11 years old). This database will enable policy makers to improve aquatic education programs to enable children to make the aquatic environment a place for beneficial and sustainable physical activity.

Peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) and speed at first (LT1, minimal lactate equivalent) and second lactate threshold (LT2 =LT1 + 1.5 mmol·L-1) are crucial swimming performance surrogates. The present randomized controlled study investigated the effects of blood flow restriction (BFR) during low intensity swimming (LiT) on VO2peak, LT1, and LT2. Eighteen male swimmers (22.7 ± 3 yrs; 69.9 ± 8.5 kg; 1.8 ± 0.1 m; swimming experience: 9 ± 6.3 yrs) were either assigned to the BFR or control (noBFR) group. While BFR was applied during LiT, noBFR completed the identical LIT without BFR application. BFR of the upper limb was applied via customized pneumatic cuffs (75% of occlusion pressure: 135 ± 10 mmHg; 8 cm cuff width). BFR training took place three times a week over 5 weeks (accumulated weekly net BFR training: 60 min/week; occlusion per session: 2-times 10 min/session) and was used exclusively at low intensities. VO2peak, LT1, and LT2 diagnostics were employed. Bayesian credible intervals revealed notable VO2peak improvements by +0.29 L·min-1 kg-1 Bodyweight (95% credible interval: -0.26 to +0.85 L·min-1 kg-1) when comparing BFR vs. noBFR. Speed at LT1 -0.01 m·s-1 (-0.04 to +0.02 m·s-1) and LT2 -0.01 m·s-1 (-0.03 to +0.02 m·s-1) did not change meaningfully when BFR was employed. Fifteen sessions of LIT swimming (macrocycle of 5 h over 5 weeks) with a weekly volume of 60 minutes with BFR application adds additional impact on VO2peak improvement compared to noBFR LIT swimming. Occasional BFR applications should be considered as a promising means to improve relevant performance surrogates in trained swimmers.

Purpose : This study aims to investigate how physical education teachers analyze their students’ swimming skills. Particular attention is given to information gathering within the diagnostic process. Methods : Data were collected from a quantitative online survey of German physical education teachers from primary and secondary schools ( n = 551). This survey’s questionnaire is based on evaluated statements from a qualitative interview study ( n = 10). Findings : Teachers’ diagnostic approaches vary greatly and differ in terms of quality criteria and usability. The predominant method used is movement observation, but 50.3% of the teachers do it rather rarely or without the use of criteria. Many of them (63.8%) would like to be supported by a diagnostic tool for the analysis of swimming skills. Discussion/Conclusion : It has been concluded that an accurate analysis of the students’ swimming skills as a precondition for adaptive lesson structuring is not achieved. It is necessary to determine whether a diagnostic tool could improve this process.