Interplay between physiological and kinematic determinants of butterfly swimming performance: a systematic scoping review

Current research perspectives are shifting from a traditional focus solely on the physiological and metabolic characteristics of butterfly swimming towards integrated analyses that combine kinematics and physiology. This reveals that the dynamic interaction between technique and physical capacity is key to performance. Therefore, this systematic scoping review aims to synthesize the kinematic and physiological variables associated with butterfly swimming performance, to provide an integrated analysis of how their interaction jointly influences performance across key factors such as sex, skill level, intensity zone, and fatigue state, and to systematically examine the experimental and testing protocols used to assess these variables in order to characterize current methodological approaches and identify gaps for future research.