Cette étude vise à montrer l’intérêt d’articuler des données biomécaniques et d’expérience pour mieux comprendre l’activité en sport et, plus largement, l’activité. Afin d’étudier l’activité de nageurs élites confrontés à un dispositif technologique (le MAD system) évaluant les facteurs biomécaniques de la performance, elle intègre deux approches : l’ « approche biomécanique » et celle du « cours d’action ». Trois nageurs élites ont participé à l’étude. Le traitement des données a consisté à reconstruire, et comparer, le cours d’in-formation de chaque nageur par l’articulation des analyses biomécaniques et celles de l’expérience des nageurs. Les résultats révèlent des traits typiques de l’activité organisant la dynamique de leur interaction avec le dispositif et montrent les liens entre l’organisation de leur activité, les caractéristiques physiques du dispositif technologique et les consignes de réalisation du protocole d’évaluation.
The integration of biomechanical and experience data to understand the activity of high-level swimmers and facilitate the conception of a device for evaluatingThe purpose was to examine elites swimmers’ activity confronted with an underwater technical device (MAD system) used to estimate the biomechanical factors of the performance. It consisted in the articulation of the biomechanical data and experience data for a better understanding of the activity in sport and, more widely, to understand better the activity. The data were produced from two different approaches to analyze the activity. The first approach is an activity-centred approach: the « course of action » empirical research programme. The second is the biomechanical approach which analyzes the activity by focusing on the mechanical properties of the movements. These two approaches were integrated for (a) a better understanding of the swimmers’ interactions with the device and the modalities of construction of their swimming activity, and (b) draw from conclusions for the conception of the use of this device to optimize its function of evaluation. Three international swimmers participated in the study. Three types of data were collected: video recordings of the swimmer’s behaviours; biomechanical data of measure of the speed and propelling strengths of the swimmer; verbalization data from interviews about the swimmer’s experience. The data were processed in three steps: analyzing (a) the biomechanical data, (b) each swimmer’s course of experience and (c) reconstructing and comparing each swimmer’s course of in-formation by the integration of the biomechanical and course of experience analyzes.The results showed a variation of the activity for all swimmers during the situation of evaluation : three forms of activities-types organized the dynamics of their interactions with the device. They pointed out that the activity of the swimmers is structured by the physical characteristics of the device and the conditions of speed of swimming prescribed by the protocol of evaluation. Only the threshold of the “fast speeds” guarantees an optimal appropriation of the device by the swimmers. By the articulation of these biomechanical and experience data, this study highlights and discusses the problem of technical device appropriation during a protocol of evaluation in sport. It also underlines the mutual enrichment of the biomechanical and the experience data (a) to understand the activity of the swimmers in the situation of an evaluation and (b) to do design proposals for using the MAD system in evaluation and training sessions.
