RU2202325C2 - Apparatus for health-improving swimming - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: sportive and medicinal equipment. SUBSTANCE: apparatus has air medium reservoir and gaseous medium reservoir, retaining member arranged on swimmer's lower limbs and connected through intermediate unit to immovable surface of air medium reservoir or gaseous medium reservoir, where individual is situated. Intermediate unit has pulling force sensors and total information indicating device. Retaining member is composed of part arranged before joint and part arranged behind joint. Apparatus facilitates user's swimming in water or other liquid while allowing human organism to come into contact with air medium or other medium for breathing. EFFECT: increased prophylactic, therapeutic and rehabilitating effect during swimming of user in restricted space under variable environmental conditions. 6 cl, 3 dwg

Description

 The device relates to technical means that facilitate the swimming of a person in water or another liquid with the simultaneous contact of the human body with air or other gas environment.

 Known devices that ensure human swimming in water or in a special immersion medium in the form of pools: sports or therapeutic (SU 1569011 A1), as well as in the form of technical means to improve the speed of the human body when moving in water (RU 2003370 C1; US patent 4944703 and others.). In all cases, the optimal swimming load on the muscles of a person contributes to an increase in the effectiveness of the training and health process in sports, wellness or medical swimming. A training and health-improving effect is also exerted by the external environment — medicinal water of various temperatures, immersion medium, ionized air, air at different atmospheric pressure, with different contents of oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.

 The disadvantage of these devices is the low efficiency of the training and health-improving process, since the known devices do not allow complex modification of the parameters of a person’s environment under conditions of swimming physical activity.

 The closest prototype is a bath O.Ya. Boxer for human hardening, prevention and treatment of weather sensitivity (patent RU 2057516). The bath contains two media - air and water. Each of them comes into contact with the human body and, when changing the parameters of a given environment, the functional systems of the human body adapt to these changes with prolonged periodic exposure.

 The disadvantage of this technical solution is the inability to carry out effective classical (crawl, etc.) swimming movements that provide an additional training and health-improving effect when swimming in a confined space and adaptation (with a long swimming time) to physical stress in a changing environment.

 The aim of the invention is to increase the effectiveness of prophylactic, therapeutic or rehabilitation processes when a person is swimming in a limited space in variable environmental conditions.

 This goal is achieved by the fact that on each of the lower extremities of the person one end of the fixing element is fixed, and the other end of the fixing element is connected directly or through an intermediate block to any structure that does not move relative to the floating person. This device is placed in a quasi-hermetic chamber of the pool with inlet and outlet openings for each of the reservoirs of water and air media, and in front of the person’s face a psychostimulating block is connected to the initiator, which forms psychostimulating signals. In this case, modifiers are connected to the inlet openings, and demodifiers of water and air environments are connected to the outlet openings. When using the device collectively (“honeycomb pool”), individual retaining elements and intermediate blocks are attached to each swimmer, and reservoirs of water and air are common to all swimmers, and the reservoir construction scheme is similar to the construction of an individual pool (camera). However, in this case, the display unit of the group summary information is used.

 Figure 1 shows a diagram of an individual pool (camera), where swimmer 1, fixing element 2, intermediate block 3 with traction sensor 4, psycho-stimulating block 6, quasi-hermetic chamber 7 with input 8 and output 9 holes are indicated containing two tanks - with air 10 and water 11 medium, and connecting elements 12 are connected to the holes, connecting the tanks with the corresponding external environment through modifiers 13 and demodifiers 14 of the external environment. The signals for the psychostimulating block 6 are generated by the initiator 18. Along the perimeter of the pool (chamber) on the surface of the liquid are wave-extinguishing floats 19.

 Figure 2 presents a diagram of the "honeycomb" pool (camera) for group swimming, where swimmers 1, fixing elements 2, intermediate blocks 3 with traction sensors 4, psychostimulating blocks 6, initiator 18, group summary information display unit 15 are indicated, general for swimmers, tanks of air 10 and water 11 environment, connecting elements 12, modifiers 13 and demodifiers 14 of the external environment, connecting the respective tanks with the air or water environment, as well as wave extinguishing floats 19.

 Figure 3 presents the locking element 2, consisting of prearticular 16 and postarticular 17 fragments.

 The device operates as follows. Swimmer 1 puts on a fixing element 2 on his feet so that the pre-articular fragment 16 is located on the foot below the ankle joint, and the post-articular fragment 17 is located above the ankle joint. Next, the swimmer secures the locking element 2 through the intermediate unit 3 with the traction sensor 4 to the chamber wall or to any structure that does not move relative to the floating person and begins to swim. The pulling force generated during swimming is recorded by a hermetically sealed or waterproof pulling force sensor 4 and the signal equivalent to the pulling force is transmitted to the display unit of the summary information 5. When swimming a group of people in the “cellular” pool, the summary information is recorded by the display unit of the group summary information 15. The resulting information in the form of the sum of the values of traction efforts distributed over time, the total time of training or other indicators is a measure of the effectiveness of training and fitness of the process, ie, an integral indicator of the impact on the body of the general healing effects of swimming: body massage with turbulent movement of water; an increase in blood and lymph circulation in the muscles; training effect on the strength and endurance of muscle groups; the effect of breathing "under excessive pressure" - exhale into the water; the effect of "zero gravity" created in water and others. To them is added the effect of "stretching" of the spinal column, recorded during normal swimming and when swimming with the proposed fixing element.

 Upon entering the chamber 7 through the modifiers 13 in the air 10 or water 11 environment changed by different parameters of air or water, the swimmer swims in different swimming conditions. For example, when warm air enters, the air temperature in the chamber 7 rises above the comfort temperature set by the hygiene standards for swimming in the pool, while the water temperature drops below the norm if cold water enters the aqueous medium 10 through the modifier 13.

 The modifying factor is combined with the flow of air or water entering the reservoirs from the external environment, directly, for example by mixing cold and hot water, or indirectly, for example, by cooling air or water passed through pipes placed in a cold chamber. Similarly, an air or water chemical mixture is formed that is necessary for healing or treatment, altered physical conditions are created - for example, the pressure of the air flow entering the chamber is increased by a compressor, or water is disinfected by ozonation, etc. A variety of treatment plants or deactivators of chemical and physical factors are used as a demodifier.

 Changed environmental parameters, indicators of the levels of physical activity required for training (set values of traction effort, load time, etc.), as well as various signals of mental influence on the swimmer, are sent to the screen of the psychostimulating block 6 through the initiator 18 or in a common way - by presenting the swimmer visual, auditory or other signals acting on his senses. If the swimmer needs to consider visual signals through the water, the swimmer puts on goggles designed for swimming.

 In sports swimming, an increase in swimming speed is usually achieved by increasing traction or reducing the resistance (wave, windshield, friction, inertia) of water. In recreational and therapeutic swimming, a greater healing effect is achieved by increasing both traction and water resistance. In the manufacture of the post-articular fragment of the proposed device, special conditions are created for increasing the resistance of water in the traction direction and decreasing the resistance of water in the anti-traction direction, which reduces the force of the device on the joints of the foot and simultaneously increases the training load on the muscles of the upper extremities. This is also achieved by putting on various post-articular parts of the body of clothing (leggings, swimming trunks, swimwear, etc.) made of anti-traction material, i.e. material with properties that increase resistance to movement in water in the traction direction.

 The test results of the proposed device showed that the effectiveness of the training and healing process when swimming in a confined space with the proposed device increases by 3-7% compared with the known devices (according to the SAN test indicator, well-being, activity, mood).

Sources of information
1. Therapeutic pool. Patent SU 1569011 A1, A 61 H 33/00.

 2. A device for swimming. Patent RU 2003 370 C1, A 63 B 31/00.

 3. US patent 4944703, CL. 441/62 from 07/31/90.

 4. Bath O.Ya. Boxers for human tempering, prevention and treatment of weather sensitivity. Patent RU 2057516, A 61 H 33/00.

Claims (6)

 1. A device for hardening a person, containing reservoirs of air and water, connected to the external environment through modifiers of air and water, characterized in that the device contains fixing pre-articular part of the ankle joint of the lower extremities of the swimmer elements consisting of pre-articular and postarticular fragments and connected through an intermediate unit containing a traction force sensor and a unit for displaying the final information, with the tank surface not moving relative to the swimmer, in which m is liquid for swimming, or with the wall of the tank with the air.  2. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that it contains a psychostimulating block connected to an initiator forming stimulating signals.  3. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that wave-extinguishing floats are placed along the perimeter of the pool wall.  4. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that the air and water reservoirs are combined together, the fixing elements and intermediate blocks are individually fixed to the swimmer and to the tank wall, and the traction sensors of the intermediate blocks are connected to the group summary information display unit.  5. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that it contains demodifiers of air and water environments.  6. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that the post-articular fragment of the fixing device and swimwear elements are made of materials with the highest resistance to movement in water in the traction direction and low resistance in the anti-traction direction.

Images