Abstract
The purpose of this study was to find out the effects of men's swimsuits on swimming position and muscle activity in gliding motion. For this objective, the swimming experiments to measure electromyogram and gliding position in sagittal plane simultaneously were conducted by using 3-types of men's swimsuit (A,B, and C). Next, we compared experimental results one-on-one between swimsuits by ANOVA (analysis of variance). The results of experiment and ANOVA showed that in wearing Swimsuit C, compared to Swimsuits A and B, hip became lower to shoulder (p<0.05), hip joint became more extended (p<0.05), and muscle activity of ES (Erector Spinae) and drag coefficient had tendency to decrease. In addition, we established a new index which is corrected muscle activity of ES considering the difference of hip joint angle. We confirmed statistically that Swimsuit C had effects of extending hip joint and/or reducing muscle activity of ES (p<0.05). The reason for this was considered to be that the high tension to direction of extension of hip joint produced these Swimsuit C's effects by helping the muscle to extend the hip joint.
