Strength and Conditioning in Aquatic Sports: Training Adaptations and Performance Outcomes

Aquatic sports have seen substantial development over the past twenty years, making strength and conditioning essential parts of athlete training at all competitive levels. Modern programs integrate in-water technical and physiological exercises with dryland workouts to improve strength, power, muscular endurance, neuromuscular performance, injury prevention, and overall competitive ability.

While strength and conditioning methods are becoming more common in aquatic sports, several important questions remain unresolved. There's still debate about the effectiveness of dryland training for improving aquatic performance, and coaches face challenges in optimally integrating resistance exercises with swimming drills. Recent research also suggests that factors such as training order, concurrent training, fatigue management, recovery strategies, athlete maturation, sex differences, and tailored programs can substantially influence outcomes.

Recent technological advances—including wearable sensors, force measurement systems, velocity-based training, motion analysis, artificial intelligence, and machine learning—have also expanded the possibilities for monitoring performance and optimizing strength training prescriptions for aquatic athletes. However, the scientific evidence remains fragmented across aquatic disciplines, limiting the development of unified, evidence-based recommendations.

This Research Topic aims to bring together researchers, sport scientists, strength and conditioning experts, biomechanists, physiologists, coaches, and clinicians across all aquatic sports. Its goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of recent advances in dryland training and how they translate into aquatic performance. By incorporating multidisciplinary perspectives, this collection seeks to bridge the gap between laboratory research and real-world coaching practices, ultimately promoting evidence-based training methods that enhance performance and reduce injury risk.

We welcome submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Strength and conditioning interventions in swimming, artistic swimming, water polo, diving, open-water swimming, para swimming, and finswimming

• Acute and chronic adaptations to resistance training

• Concurrent strength and endurance training

• Neuromuscular adaptations and fatigue mechanisms

• Transfer of dryland performance to sport-specific aquatic performance

• Power development and explosive performance

• Sprint performance enhancement

• Strength training periodization

• Velocity-based resistance training

• Plyometric training and ballistic exercises

• Core stability and trunk function

• Muscular endurance training

• Tethered swimming performance

• Biomechanical and kinematic adaptations

• Recovery strategies following strength training

• Training load monitoring and athlete readiness

• Injury prevention and shoulder health

• Youth athletic development

• Female athlete considerations

• Paralympic aquatic sports

• Technology-assisted monitoring (wearables, force sensors, AI, machine learning)

• Evidence-based coaching practices and practical applications

This Research Topic seeks to deepen our understanding of how strength and conditioning impact performance in aquatic sports by synthesizing current scientific evidence and promoting multidisciplinary collaboration. It also offers practical guidance for coaches, practitioners, and high-performance support staff.