PROJECT

Open Water Swimming in the Swan River

RiverLab Project

Open water swimming in the Swan River

Supervisors

  • Scott Draper
    Associate Professor, Oceans Graduate School

  • Grant Landers
    Lecturer, School of Human Sciences 

  • Nat Benjanuvatra
    Associate Lecturer, School of Human Sciences

  • Terry Griffiths

    PhD Candidate, Oceans Graduate School

  • Justin Geldard
    PhD Candidate, Oceans Graduate School

Students

  • Adrienne Gamble
  • Enoch Ma

Project Description

Open water swimming is growing in popularity both as a new Olympic sport and as a great way to undertake low impact exercise. It is also has a rich history with the Swan River in Western Australia, with the ‘Swim thru Perth’ being the oldest open water swim in Australia.

Unlike when swimming in the pool, open water swimmers often encounter surface waves. It is believed that surface waves can have a range of effects on a swimmers performance (e.g. speed) and their behaviour (e.g. swimming stroke, sighting, drafting, etc.). However, limited quantitative data has been collected. Without this, it is difficult to fine tune or validate techniques and training programs. 

This project focuses on swimming with waves and against waves.

With respect to swimming with the waves, we will investigate if (a) swimmers get a relative performance boost when there still water swimming speed is close to the celerity (or speed) that a wave propagates, and (b) if variable stroke rate is beneficial to surge and catch waves as they pass by.

With respect to swimming against the waves, we investigate if (a) a swimmers optimum stroke rate changes compared to their optimum stroke rate in still water and (b) if there is an advantage of swimming ‘in tune’ with the waves, e.g. adjusting your stroke rate to  match the rate at which you encounter waves whilst swimming.

All of the experiments are being undertaken in the 54 m long UWA wave flume at wave periods spanning 1-4 s. These periods are typical of those experienced in the Swan River.

The work is a collaboration between researchers in the Oceans Graduate School and the School of Sports Science, Exercise and Health. The research is being led by MPE students Adrienne Gamble and Enoch Ma.

Figure 1. Side view of swimmer in the wave flume

Figure 2. Front view of swimmer in the wave flume