To determine the anaerobic and aerobic limit of swimmers, the lactate concentration in the blood is measured. Lactate is also a good indicator of a swimmer’s improvement; however, it is an invasive method of determining one’s improvement and many coaches do not have access to such tests. Therefore, new non-invasive methods started appearing more frequently. Among the non-invasive methods of determining a workout’s intensity, the critical velocity tests are the most common ones. Critical velocity also have a correlation with the workout intensity equal to the blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol/L and therefore anaerobic endurance. The focus of this research is to determine the effects of selected 6 weeks long workout routine on a swimmer’s critical velocity. The goal was to determine whether the critical velocity of the swimmers will increase or decrease after the 6-week period, while also showing the difference between swimmers that swam slower than their critical velocity and those who swam at their critical velocity. Every week, blood lactate concentration was measured, to see how critical velocity affects the lactate concentration during an extended time period. For the research, 14 swimmers from Plavalni klub Olimpija were selected. First, they were tested to determine each individual’s critical velocity. After the critical velocity for all 14 swimmers was determined, the 6-week period of testing at critical velocity started. At the end of the 6-week period, all the swimmers were tested for their new critical velocity to determine the changes in it. The findings show that the 6-week long workout routine helped the swimmers increase only their velocity on 200 m distance, which showed a 0.1 m/s increase in their speed for the experimental group. However, the control group show the opposite results with their velocity decreasing for 0.03 m/s on average. The experimental group showed no improvement on swimming the 400 m distance, while the control group showed a decrease in their velocity. While there was no time improvement in the 400 m distance, the swimmers demonstrated an increase in the efficiency of their strokes by lowering the number of strokes for 0.8 strokes on 400 m. There was no measured difference in blood lactate concentrations after the chosen set (20 x 100 m), in the 6-week period between two groups.
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