Sorry, too lazy to search (and fearful of finding too much info). I see a lot of swimming posts referring to the “quadrants” (or words to this effect). Are we talking a hand entry thing? Or otherwise? Can someone give a quick 101? Thanks!
you kind of draw a perpendicular line running through your shoulders and then a horizontal line running down your spine. that gives you the quadrants. the ones in front of your shoulder are the front quadrants. you want to stay there. that is where your propulsion is and also how you balance your self. get the videos from Quick. I just borrowed them from a friend and i found them extremely helpful. they really explained everything. i know have a better understanding of body, line and balance.
got it. FLA Jill gave me this little piece of advice but i couldn’t picture it…“Unlike freestyle, backstroke is something of a rear quadrant stroke”…all makes sense now. thanks…
you kind of draw a perpendicular line running through your shoulders and then a horizontal line running down your spine. that gives you the quadrants. the ones in front of your shoulder are the front quadrants. you want to stay there. that is where your propulsion is and also how you balance your self. get the videos from Quick. I just borrowed them from a friend and i found them extremely helpful. they really explained everything. i know have a better understanding of body, line and balance.
Not so sure you want to stay in the front quadrant, and they are not where the propulsion is. The propulsion is 60/40 front to rear and both provide balance. Hence the necessity to focus on long strokes and the DPS drills. I assume you are talking about freestyle. If it was breastroke, then you are correct.
No need to worry about this, they are just different forms of swimming, mainly relating to stroke rate and stroke distance. There’s no need to think in quadrants, as the stroking arm effects a continuum across the quadrants - and where the stroking arm should be compared to the entry arm will vary from person for their optimal technique.
It’s probably best to learn a FQ-style free first, before changing that. Some middle-distance swimmers use MQ to great effect.
Rotary feels like sprinting to most, but it can be a very efficient technique for dealing with strong currents or bad surf. Many distance swimmers use this - most have a surf background. It can be a very powerful stroke if you initiate the catch at the same time as the puh phase. Look at Hoogenband, for example.
I’m in the camp that says that whatever quadrant swimming isn’t a goal. It’s a way of describing how hand and arm placement ends up shaking out when you’re doing everything else right.
In freestyle, if you watch in slow motion, for 80%+ of swimmers, their pulling arm will be at the chest when their recovery arm is at the point where it’s going to enter the water. You call that 80% of freestylers as swimming a front quadrant freestyle. For most of the time it has to do with being able to move the recovery arm faster than you can move the pulling arm.
In backstroke, the recovery arm is hitting the water at a time when the pulling arm is at or past the waist. I’m no scientist who can explain the mechanics of why it works better to have arms in that way compared to freestyle, but for whatever reason, the stroke works better that way.