INTRODUCTION: Many endurance sports require a hard training regime, and swimming is one of the most physically and mentally demanding of all sports as they have a hard in-water and out-of-water training program. For many swimmers breathing problems cause additional stress in the recovery process. The prevalence of exercise induced asthma (EIA) and bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR) is especially high amongst elite endurance athletes and has markedly increased over the last three decades. In addition for swimmers, the inhalation of chlorine is thought to be an airway provoking factor during training and competitions (Drobnic et al., 1996). The aim of this preliminary investigation is to test if there are any links between breathing problems, physiological and psychological recovery for swimmers. METHODS: 15 male and 9 female adolescent swimmers performed one Methacholine challenge and two Eucapnic voluntary hyperventilation (EVH) tests. In addition, the swimmers also filled in a questionnaire package that consisted of scales measuring perfectionism, burnout, recovery and motivational climate. RESULTS: 15 of 24 swimmers had at least one positive test result to either one of the EVH tests or to the methacholine challenge (PD20 .2 ƒÊmol). When coding the swimmers as responsive or not responsive, we were able to correlate BHR with psychological variables which gave some significant and meaningful results even though low number of participants. BHR correlated negatively with accomplished recovery (-.44, p<.05), and positively with perfectionism (parental criticism: .48, p<.05). DISCUSSION: This preliminary investigation emphasize that the prevalence of bronchial hyper responsiveness (BHR) among elite adolescent swimmers is alarmingly high. Breathing problems may lead to underperformance, though; BHR is rarely mentioned as a physiological marker for e.g. overtraining (Richardson et al., 2008). Hence, parental pressure, massive training load, unsuccessful recovery is vital issues with applied consequences both for training and competition. In conclusion, there is evidence that we need more research about this possible (breathing) stress-recovery imbalance in order to identify underrecovery
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