Paris (AFP)

"It's a bit like taking a fish out of your jar": swimmers, dry for fifty days and deprived of their unique environment, where sensations and repetition of efforts are essential, are particularly affected by confinement .

Accustomed to spending four to five hours a day in the water and aligning lengths and kilometers - up to twenty for open water specialists - they were brutally extracted from it by the confinement started in mid-March.

"It's simple: it is impossible to find out of the water the sensations that one can have in the water, decides the triple European champion 2018 Charlotte Bonnet. It is completely separate (compared) to land sports. "

"We lose all our usual benchmarks when we dive in the pool: we are horizontal, our arms are our means of propulsion, we must block our breathing on our movements", describes to AFP the 2018 European champion of the 400 m 4 swimming Fantine Lesaffre. Far from earthly habits, standing "on our two legs" and spontaneous breathing.

"There are not many sports that stray as far from what the human being is capable of doing on a daily basis, analyzes with AFP the Nice trainer Fabrice Pellerin. Walking, running, jumping are things which call upon programs which we maintain in our daily gestures. But swimming is part of the sports not really natural for the Man. "

"There is everything to deconstruct and rebuild when you swim: you have to reclaim an environment, get rid of gravity, the modes of perception change, you go from vertical to horizontal posture, from natural to forced exhalation. upsets a lot of things, "he says.

- "We lose very quickly" -

"And this particular coordination, to really touch something efficient, you have to spend hours on it," adds the technician.

Impossible for almost two months now. For swimmers, an eternity. "It's been practically fifteen years that I haven't lived such a long period" without swimming, summarizes AFP Bonnet, 25 years since mid-February.

It is not without consequence.

With confinement, "we are removed from the constraints linked to the element specific to our sport, so we are very far from even preserving what requires a lot of repetition," summarizes Pellerin.

"We lose very, very quickly what takes time to be improved: the very specific muscle chains that we use when we swim, the joint movements sometimes a little new compared to what we do on earth, breathing, gliding sensations, technique ... A lot of extremely specific things that you can't find, even with a little ingenuity ", out of the water, he lists.

"There will be some reconnection work to be done with this environment which will require a little time", anticipates the coach.

How much, while the post-May 11, announced date of the beginning of the deconfinement, remains vague for the swimmers?

Bonnet oscillates between at least "two months to feel comfortable" and up to "four months to find a competitive level".

- Not made to run -

To still "keep in touch with water", so precious, the 2016 Olympic bronze medalist in the 10 km open water Marc-Antoine Olivier swims him at least an hour a day in the private pool of his welcoming neighbors. But only in static, retained by an elastic.

"A chance", but "the bare minimum", he explains to AFP. "These are the same supports but not my usual technique. And the loss of mileage, which plays a huge part in our discipline, is enormous."

While waiting to dive back, the constraints of confinement, which in particular push them to rub themselves against running to converse physically as best they can, only remind swimmers that they are shaped to be in the water, and not dry.

"We suck," smiles Bonnet. "I did a few sessions and I was very, very quickly out of breath on earth. It is completely different" as endurance.

"We are a worn sport. It is not the same skills that we develop, so it is difficult to run or work with other equipment, a bicycle or a rower", adds Olivier.

Above all, their bodies begin to creak under the effect of sports practices more traumatic than swimming.

"Running puts us in difficulty because we use muscles that we don't use as much as usual and that causes a lot of shocks with each step. It triggers injuries that we don't usually have," explains Lesaffre.

She suffers from the hip, other swimmers from her adductor antibois group or even hamstrings. For Bonnet, in addition to the aches that invite themselves, it is the knees and ankles that are painful.

© 2020 AFP