bluntandy wrote:
This has been around for a while. The rake hand was debated when Ian Thorpe was winning everything.
So I tried it. If you can keep the correct distance between your fingers then it works but I can't maintain it for long before my fingers splay and flex. Keeping fingers together with enough tension is easier mentally.
There is a bit of "webbing" in your palm that dissappears if you have your fingers too tight and just looking at it purely from physics, the surface area of your fingers would become smaller by holding them together. I have watched Videos of Grant Hacket entering the water "thumb in" and then when he goes to pull his thumb goes "way out" to maximize the webbing between the thumb and fore finger. I just can't keep focused long enough to keep moving thumb in and out on every stroke, so I just swim with "thumb out".
Dev