Maximal oxygen uptake during free, tethered, and flume swimming

The purpose of this study was 1) to compare the maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) obtained in swimmers during tethered swimming, free swimming, and flume swimming, and 2) to determine whether an arm-ergometer test would provide comparable results. In the first experiments the VO2max for tethered swimming (2.67 +/- 0.26 l/min) and flume swimming (2.62 +/- 0.26 l/min) were not different (P greater than 0.05) and were highly correlated (r = 0.99). However, with arm ergometry a significantly lower VO2max (2.36 +/- 0.24 l/min) occurred from those found in the two swimming tests (P less than 0.05). Other experiments demonstrated that the tethered swimming VO2max (3.53 +/- 0.27 l/min) and the free swimming VO2max (3.55 +/- 0.28 l/min) also provide results that were similar (P greater than 0.05) and highly correlated with each other (r = 0.99). Differences between tethered and flume swimming, and tethered and free swimming were small, being 1.2 +/- 1.6% and 0.6 +/- 0.9%, respectively. Differences between tethered swimming and arm ergometry VO2max were large, 14.7 +/- 2.4%, despite the high correlation (r = 0.97) between these measurements. Predictions of a swimming VO2max from the arm-ergometer data yielded a considerable error (+/-7.1% and +/-7.4%). The present results indicate that flume swimming, free swimming, and tethered swimming yield essentially identical VO2max results.