Children in upper primary school who have not made progress along the Swimming and Water Safety Continuum may be at a greater risk in an aquatic environment because they have not developed the swimming competency, endurance and skills needed for survival in threatening aquatic situations. Three groups representing different socio-economic and geographical areas were selected to explore the relationships between psycho-social factors and the development of swimming ability among year seven students. Two groups from lower socio-economic areas were chosen. The first group was directly on the coast with easy access to the beach, while the second group was inland in the foothills of Perth. As higher socio-economic areas in Perth are generally not far from the coast only one group from a higher socio-economic coastal area was chosen. The participants were 540 year seven students, 282 of whom were males and 258 of whom were females. The primary variable of interest was the current swimming stage of year seven participants, and the differences between genders and/or locality groups. The primary research questions investigated differences between locality groups and/or genders for; a) perceived athletic competence and global self-worth, b) perceived swimming competency, confidence in deep water and importance placed on learning to swim well. c) perceived social support for sport and swimming activities and d) attendance at Interm, Vacswim and other swimming programs and aquatic venue experience. Relationships between swimming stage and the above variables were analysed. The secondary research questions investigated the most frequent reasons given by the students for not attending or discontinuing participation inVacswim, and whether there were differences between locality groups or genders. Findings indicated that the lower socio-economic groups had a significantly lower swimming stage and lower perceived self-worth than the higher socioeconomic group. Students from the lower socio-economic inland area had the lowest mean swimming stage as well as lower perceived social support for sport and swimming than either of the other two groups in the study. The two lower socioeconomic groups also attended less swimming instruction and placed less emphasis on the importance of learning to swim well than the higher socio-economic group. Despite these findings, the lower socio-economic groups did not view themselves as any less able in terms of athletic and swimming competence. However, as the two lower socio-economic groups have not progressed along the Swimming and Water Safety Continuum to the 'desirable standards' of the RLSSA (1999), these groups could be viewed as at-risk in an aquatic environment. At the same time, there was evidence that attendance at Interm along with attendance at another swimming program enabled participants to reach the 'desirable standards' of the RLSSA (1999). Girls generally had a higher swimming stage than boys in the lower socio-economic areas, attended year seven Interm and Vacswim more than boys, reported more social support for sport and swimming, and placed more emphasis on the importance of learning to swim well than boys. While many of these relationships between swimming stage and psycho-social factors have been intuitively accepted within the swimming teaching industry, we now have a better understanding of the strength and direction of these relationships.

Replacing humans with underwater robots for accomplishing marine tasks such as oceanic supervision and undersea operations have been an endeavour from long time ago. Hence, a number of underwater robots have been developed. Among those underwater robots, developing biomimetic swimming robots has been appealing for many researchers and institutes since these robots have shown superior performance. Biomimetic swimming robots have higher swimming efficiency, manoeuvrability and noiseless performance. However, the existing biomimetic swimming robots are specialised for a single gait of locomotion like cruising, manoeuvrability and accelerating while for efficient accomplishment of marine tasks, an underwater robot needs to have multiple gaits of locomotion. In order to develop multiple-gaited swimming robots, the optimal characteristics of each gait of swimming must be combined together, whereas the combination is not usually possible. The problem needs to be addressed during the design process. Moreover, the optimality of the actuation mechanism of robots - that do not utilise any artificial muscle - could be assured using the mathematical model employed for simulation of their swimming behaviour. However, the existing models are incomplete and, accordingly, not reliable since their assumptions like the constant speed of flow around the fish robot could be used when the average speed of the flow is determined during experiment while before development of robots, the flow speed is not known. In addition to that, the simulation results must be optimised using the experimental observations in nature and analytical results while the optimisation algorithms are based on one fitness function. The aforementioned problems as well as the fabrication challenges of free-swimming biomimetic robots are addressed in a development process of multiple-gaited fish-mimetic robots introduced by the author in this thesis. This development method engages the improvement of all development steps of fish robots including design, mathematical modelling, optimisation and fabrication steps. In this thesis, the aforementioned steps are discussed and the contributions of the method for each step are introduced. As an outcome of the project, two prototypes of fish robots called UC-Ika 1 & 2 are built.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether traditional learn-to-swim progressions, leading to the front and back swim, were developmentally valid for children with physical disabilities. / Forty children between the ages of 5 and 12 years participated in this study. The children were described according to four descriptive characteristics: disability type, functional sport classification, mode of ambulation, and need of a flotation device. The children required recommendation from their regular aquatic instructor as being comfortable in the water to participate in the study. In addition, each child had to pass a water orientation-adjustment test. / The developmental validity of the progressions was assessed by testing the children on seven skills: rhythmic breathing, front float, front glide, front swim, back float, back glide, and back swim. A pass consisted of all criteria for success being met for a particular skill. The data were analyzed to determine the number of children who followed the typical progression and the number who followed an atypical progression. / The results indicated that the proposed learn-to-swim progressions for both the front swim and back swim were not developmentally valid for most children with physical disabilities who were neither extremely high nor low in functional sport ability. / These results are consistent with the views of ecological theory and suggest that not all children with physical disabilities will reach an end-goal using the same means. Aquatic instructors therefore, need to adapt their teaching methods to the individual strengths of their students.

The task of the thesis was to create a water-environmental game collection for children of primary school-age, which was subsequently verified in practice. Content analysis method has been used to create analytical parts. The analytical part of the thesis contains findings (information) about importance of swimming for children of early school-age, stages of swimming and description of swimming styles and techniques. Last, but not least, there is also a water-environmental game collection for swimmers and non-swimmers. The thesis also contains information about swimming equipment as well, as basic safety points which must be observe during the swimming lesson. The analytical part of the thesis is based on the processing of the synthetic part of the thesis, whose task was to verify the game collection in practice. The synthetic part describes the success or failure of games whether they are beneficial to children or not, as well as a description of non-swimmers' lessons in one of the swimming styles. The main benefit of this thesis is a collection of games for children that can be used by other teachers in practice.

My dissertation involves teaching students in elementary schools. The task of my theoretical portion is retaining basic swimming lessons for children in swimming schools. The practical portion is focused on the findings of the children's abilities based upon the output and input test of basic swimming skills. Another part of the practical portion involves creating a twenty hour educational program and design the classroom's cirrculum. Between the main methods of my research, it involves observing children, and scoring their abilities to accomplish basic swimming skills with comparing obtained data. KEYWORDS definition of swimming, elementary students, swimming schools, basic swimming lesson, basic swimming skill

The dissertation deals with sport swimming in the Czech lands and in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period, specifically in the period of the so-called First Republic. However, the work dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, when the first, especially river, swimming pools began to be established in our territory, which were first used for swimming training of soldiers, and only at the end of the 19th century did the general public learn to swim and there are also the first swimming competitions. The greatest development of sport swimming in our territory occurred only after the First World War, when the Czechoslovak Amateur Swimming Association was founded and it sought maximum organizational, financial and material support for swimming. Our swimmers achieved the best swimming performances in the 1920s, when they were able to compete with the European swimming powers. However, they did not have the world's top swimming, which was also seen at the Olympic Games in 1920, 1924, 1928 and 1936. In the early 1930s, the performance of our swimmers began to stagnate, which could be attributed to the fact that in other countries swimming was supported in all respects, but this was not the case in the Czechoslovak Republic, from the very beginning of sport swimming in our territory. Keywords:...

Title: Swimming level of applicants for the study at FTVS UK Objectives: The aim of this theses is to evaluate the swimming level of applicants for studies of physical education at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports at Charles University in the years 2008-2019. The survey will be conducted on the basis of the average times achieved and the average score of the candidates. Furthermore, we will probe the differences in the swimming level of men and women and in the choice of the swimming style. Methods: In this theses, methods of analysis and synthesis were used for data processing. Furthermore, there were used survey data analysis, statistical methods and comparison method for comparing partial results. Results: The results of the survey showed that the swimming level of applicants for studies at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports at Charles University did not change significantly in the years 2008-2019. Men achieved average times ranging from 01:28,7-01:32,2 and women 01:40,6-01:45,6. The changes were not remarkable, so it is not possible to consider these fluctuations in the swimming level as significant in the overall evaluation. A slight increase in the swimming level occurred in the last year of the survey, but there was a significant decrease in number of applicants...

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Cerebral palsy is the most common motor disability in childhood. The disorders of movement and posture are characterised by abnormal patterns of movement related to defective movement coordination and regulation of muscle tone. Secondary problems that may develop include perceptions of fatigue and pain. Difficulties with body function and structure affect the levels of activity and participation of the person, such as functional independence, walking ability and participation in leisure activities. These multiple facets of functioning contribute to the known physical inactivity problem apparent in youth with cerebral palsy. In addition, these low physical activity levels contribute to further deterioration of functioning. Hence, a vicious cycle of deconditioning exists. A community-based swimming programme was proposed to combat this vicious cycle. A systematic review on the effect of an aquatic intervention on the multiple facets of functioning of youth with cerebral palsy revealed no studies that measured the effect on pain, coordination and quality of life. Moreover, none of the authors reported the perceived enjoyment of the participants during the intervention. Furthermore, there was a lack of controlled studies reporting the effect of a swimming intervention on walking ability, fatigue, functional independence, self-perception, participation in leisure activities and aquatic skills in ambulatory youth with cerebral palsy. Consequently, the aim of this thesis was to investigate the effect of swimming on these multiple facets of functioning that are associated with the low physical activity levels, in youth with cerebral palsy. A randomised controlled cross-over design was implemented to investigate the effect of a 10-week swimming intervention on pain intensity, fatigue, walking ability, bilateral and upper limb coordination, functional independence, perceived competence, global self-worth, quality of life and swimming skills. A pre-test – post-test design was used to assess the effect of taking part in a swimming programme on participation in leisure activities. Fourteen 7 to 17 year-old youth with cerebral palsy with the ability to walk with or without walking aids completed the tests on all measurement occasions. All youth had a high adherence towards the programme, participated in the intervention with high levels of enjoyment, and most youth continued to participate in swimming after completing the programme. Moreover, no adverse events due to the programme were reported and no participants withdrew from the intervention. Swimming skills improved significantly over the 10-week swimming programme, and improved significantly more than over the control period. The changes were retained throughout a 20-week follow-up period. Positive trends of improvement were evident for walking distance at maximum walking speed, upper limb coordination, functional independence in social functioning and mobility, and perceived motor competence. The intervention was not associated with increases of pain and fatigue. Participation in the swimming programme did not affect bilateral coordination, functional independence in self-care, self-perception and quality of life. The evidence of the pre-test – post-test study suggests that learning the skill of swimming encouraged participation in activities of the formal domain, active-physical and skill-based activities, and facilitated youth to engage in aquatic activities. No control data were obtained in the pre-test – post-test study; however, the results are promising in view of the known deterioration in participation with increasing age. Additionally, the present study showed that the perceptions of youth with cerebral palsy that learning a new skill is too time consuming, and that physical activity is not fun and carries a risk of injury, pain and fatigue, were eliminated in the swimming program. The consolidation of swimming skills and high levels of enjoyment during the programme, are expected to improve participation, engagement and adherence to physical activity, which was confirmed in the present study as youth participated more in aquatic activities after one year than before the start of the study. It was concluded that swimming is an enjoyable and safe community-based physical activity that may have a positive effect on the physical, social and emotional well-being in 7 to 17 year-old youth with cerebral palsy with the ability to walk. The elimination of some of the barriers confronted by youth with cerebral palsy to engaging in physical activity is important with regard to the sustainment of a physically active lifestyle. The findings suggest that participation in swimming may aid in breaking the cycle of deconditioning.

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