OK, after taking a day off to lick my wounds i am now ready to offer Fundamental #3 Swim on the Freeway.
This fundamental pertains to inertia. Inertia simply means that it is more efficient to keep an object moving (in any medium that creates drag whether streamlined or not) than it is to get it moving in the first place.
We may remember the days when we could afford to look at new cars. Recall the sticker on the windshield that gives us two numbers for fuel efficiency, a higher value (say 26 mpg HWY) which means on the highway and a lower value (say 18 mpg) for around town. So why the difference? Why are we more efficient on the freeway driving 70 mph than we are in town where we average 30 mph? It has to do with the amount of energy it takes to get a big 4000 pound vehicle going from a dead stop. If you have ever tried to push a stalled one, you know.
Or even better yet, if you have ever had the misfortune of misjudging your flip turn and pushed off against nothing but water molecules, same problem. Ugh. The amount of energy to power you up again to race speed is overwhelming. The race is long over for you.
Because we swim in water and we are bricks, we are particularly prone to of the hazards of inertia. The reason is we decelerate so quickly without power. Budd Termin at the University at Buffalo published a nice paper a few years back showing that all breastrokers (even really good ones), after their push off the wall, underwater pull and dolphin kick, all of which help propel them forward, come to a complete stop (zero velocity) by the mere act of bringing their arms tightly forward and their thighs forward to prepare for the first stroke. Dead in the water in less than 1/2 second...once again proving that we are bricks. Breastroke, by the way, is not a 'freeway' stroke. It is an inefficient 'stop and go' stroke, or as Gary Jr calls it, 'the potatoe sack race' of swimming.
The point is this, once we power our bodies up in the water, we want to keep them powered up. In freestyle, I believe (though this has never been proven) that the highest velocity point in the stroke cycle is when either hand first enters the water and 'catches'. Why? Because we are in the most streamlined position that we can be in at that moment and we are mechanically in a stronger position at the top of our stroke (arm above our head) than we are as our hand moves (relative to the body) rearwards. Think about it, by the time our hand reaches our waist about the only decent muscle left pushing is our tricep. Above our head, we engage our deltoids, pecs, lats, biceps, triceps....all working on our behalf.
Ok. So if i am right and this is the highest velocity position (I shall call it the power position), we can only be in this power position for a limited time. And there is always some delay (since we only have two arms) from the time one hand leaves the power position and the time the other gets there. During this time, we begin to decelerate (slow) and the amount we slow depends on the time it takes us to get the other hand back to the power position and how well our other propulsive force (our legs) are maintaining our velocity. Most of us don't have the legs to do that and even if we did, as I explained in describing the hip-driven freestlyle, we likely don't want to use them in the triathlon swim. So the other option is to get the hand back to the power position quickly.
If, for example, you were cruising at a top speed of 3 mph and took you a full second to recover your arm, you likely won't drop to 2 mph like our earlier dive example where you are slowing at 1 mph each second, because you are still kicking and the back half of your arm stroke does provide some propulsion. But you might slow to 2.3 mph, and then you have to power back up to 3 mph again. The point is that you would be much more efficient if you only dropped to 2.7 or 2.8 mph and the way to do that is to get that hand back to the power position faster (increase your stroke rate)
Many studies (including Budd Termin) have shown the parabolic curve when comparing stoke rate to velocity. The faster the stroke rate, the faster you swim up to a critical point, at which turning over faster actually makes you go slower (loss of efficiency). Virtually all of sprinters in the finals of the Olympic 50 m are at or near the top of their curve. Most of us never get close.
But wait! What about Phelps and Thorpe, who look like slow motion and are turning over so much slower. Why are they going so fast? Legs, legs, legs. They each have Mercury outboards behind them that keep them on the freeway (maintain speed) in a different way.
So for the rest of us mortals who want to stay on the freeway, we must rely on increasing our stoke rate and holding the power position as well and long as we can with each hand.
In teaching this concept, I found it initially challenging to get swimmers to change their stroke rate and get them up on the curve. But then i developed a drill that really works. It is to use the freestyle with the dolphin kick....but to do it with a 1:1 ration between arm strokes and kicks. In other words, one kick, one pull...not two kicks one pull. Once you get the hang of it, you will find the groove or sync and feel pretty good doing it. It requires effort but is guaranteed to get you out of stop-and-go swim mode and onto the freeway. You can also use it for backstroke, but it is even more challenging since most of us are so accustomed to turning over way too slow on our back.
Finally, and the last thing i will leave you with, because i hate telling you about these fundamentals without telling you how to learn how to do them, are the four best drills I know for teaching the fundamentals. However, I don't have the energy to redo them so please go to our website
http://www.theraceclub.com and read the latest Aqua Notes I wrote and perhaps you will find the other blogs interesting as well. All for now.
Yours in Swimming,
Gary Sr.