ANYONE GOT A LINK OR READ THE JAN 2003, VOL 31, NO1, EDITION OF “THE PHYSICIAN AND SPORTSMEDICINE”???
supposedly talks on new stroke techniques? swimming
RVK
http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/2003/0103/johnson.htm
I think this what you are looking for, although it is not some new technique.
thanx rich!
It states in the article that the hand should exit the water around/b4 the hip? R.frey & L.watson have said one should go thru the pull motion than push towards the back (like a tricep ext) simultaneously w/hip rotation? did i read the article wrong in it saying after the pull motion exit the hand?
That is a great article! * *I think it pinpointed the cause of my shoulder issues. . . I was entering the water thumb first instead of pinkie first and over rotating my shoulder. I recommend that anyone interested in swimming mechanics take a look at it.
I read the part about the early hand exit too. I knew the “new” stroke was straight through with finger/pinkie first entry, but I never knew about the hand exit at the belt line. It seems to me this is cutting your power stroke short–unless a higher turnover rate makes up for it.
I note the following from the article:
"Competitive swimmers train 10,000 to 20,000 yards or meters per day, using the freestyle arm stroke for most of the distance. At an average of 8 to 10 arm cycles per 25 yards, a swimmer completes more than 1 million shoulder rotations each week.6 Swimmers are obviously at risk for overuse injuries, especially to the shoulder. "
Let’s say 10 arm cycles/25 yds (~20 strokes/length), 20,000 yds/day, 7days/week. That’s
20 * (20,000yds/25yds) * 7 = 20 * 800 * 7 = ~100,000 strokes/week. Off by an order of
magnitude?
For those of us who raced prior to 1994, this is “new” technique.
Ken Lehner
16 - 20 strokes per length is a much higher stroke rate than I had expected for competitive swimmers. I’m around 15 strokes per length but am still trying to reduce my stroke rate even further. Ex-collegiate swimmer friends of mine have told me top swimmers are close to 12 strokes per length. Is 16 - 20 strokes per length really what competitive adult swimmers are doing these days?
What about the early hand exit? I had been told that the last part of the hand cycle was important so I emphasize it. Looks like I have been wasting energy here.
Anyway, that article was a good one for me and I have a stack of questions fo rmy master’s coach tonight. Any comments on the forum regarding early hand exit and stroke rate for 25 yard would be appreciated
-Marc
Let’s say 10 arm cycles/25 yds (~20 strokes/length), 20,000 yds/day, 7days/week. That’s
20 * (20,000yds/25yds) * 7 = 20 * 800 * 7 = ~100,000 strokes/week. Off by an order of
magnitude?
Interesting. I wonder if the original work they quoted from has the same error, or if it was misquoted?
Regarding the technique, I am also suprised to see the “short pull” advocated here, as everything I have read talks about extending all the way through, using the “thumb-to-thigh” drill to hammer the point home. Any fish out there that can comment on this?
“Shoulder impingement and overuse injuries are still common because of the sheer number of arm strokes each swimmer makes in a given week.”
Based on this statement, wouldn’t you think if you lowered your arm stroke rate per length that your chance of shoulder injury would decline? The goal should be to reduce stroke count and increase glide by maintaining a streamlined position through body rotation. I don’t know how you lengthen your glide and reduce stroke count by SHORTENING your stroke. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me and I’ve been swimming for as long as I can remember. Laughlin’s techniques seem to make more sense to me and he calls for a fairly long recovery, if I’m not mistaken?
I am no fish and have mop/bop swim times if that matters but I was told by a coach that the pull from about chest to crotch is the most powerful part of the pull. This is from (if standing) the arm parallel to the ground (shoulder->elbow->wrist same height) to when the arm is almost straight but your hand is still parallel to the ground which goes against the early exit in this new technique. Seems like most of the others have heard the same sort of thing.
A
That’s NUTS. Competitive masters swimmers swim 3500-4000 a day. Some of the obsessive ones might do a few doubles and average 6000. 20,000 a day is 560,000 yards in February. Last year I was the top in my age group and seventh overall Iin the NATION) in the February Fitness Challenge (how far can you swim in one month) by swimming 264,000 yards (150 miles!!). There were only two people NATIONALLY who swam over 500,000. These guys are on DRUGS!!!
BTW- After 264,000 yards in February, I went to a meet in early March and SUCKED… I was so tired and overtrained I could hardly move. Fun experience, though!
Actually, the exit at the belt line is what has been taught for quite a few years with butterfly and backstroke, and freestyle. I coach high school and age group, and I have found that when I try to describe the pull as achieving full extension for the elbow prior to initiating recovery, there is a dead spot in the power phase after extension and before recovery and they get hung up with their roll. If the swimmer is told to finish his or her pull at the belt level, they actually succeed at getting full extension of the wrist and elbow simultaneously with initiating recovery, and the timing allows for a more effective rotation of the trunk to fit into the stroke cycle. I do think the article is pretty good, but it may be a little more specific to the competitive swimmer who is worried more about time over distance vs. stroke rate. I have a kid who has gone 1:38 for the 200 free, and 19+ in the 200 free relay, and he takes 13 strokes a lap in races (both the 50 and the 200 were the same count) is 6’2" tall, and not once during a race has he ever thought about stroke count. I have a girl who goes :50 for the 100 and she takes 15 strokes a lap, and is 5’7" tall. She just doesn’t think at all. They both are taught the pull ending at “belt level.” In videos, and watching them from the deck, they both reach full extension as they begin recovery, with the arm snapping out of the water and throwing forward as they roll to that side up. They do not achieve full extension under water, as this would force them to slow down the recovery and consequently their stroke. I am hard pressed to argue with the result (they both don’t have to pay for college).
Someone had posted a link to swim videos a while back, so I took a look at them again (http://www.per4m.ca/Swim%20Videos/Swim%20Videos.htm), especially the ones of Popov, and it does indeed look like his hand exits the water right around the side of his Speedo.
Verrrrry interesting…
P.S. IMHO, the video labeled “Popov”, which is the fourth from the bottom, is the best.
I can remember 15,000 meter days at my mid-level D3 college team during the post Christmas “Hell in Paradise” training trip. Though you were usually in the 6500-10000 yards per day when class was in session depending on if you were hitting optional morning practices.
And USS swim coaches here? US swimming has a little stroke analysis data up, but the big database is coaches only.
http://www.usa-swimming.org/programs/template.pl?opt=coaches&pubid=1192
Stroke count per 50M sampling from the 2000 US Olympic trials:
Gary Hall, Jr. 50fr- 36
Anthony Ervin 50fr-40
Klete Keller 200fr- 30
Josh Davis 200fr- 37
Fran Crippen 400fr-41
Klete Keller 400fr- 31
Chris Thompson 400 fr- 33
Erik Vendt 400 fr- 32
Chris Thompson 1500fr- ~39
Erik Vendt 1500fr- ~33
Amy VanDyken 50fr- 51
Hayley Cope 50fr-40
Lindsay Benko 200fr- 37
Diana Munz 200fr- 45
Diana Munz 400 fr- 44
Brooke Bennett 400 fr- 46
Julia Stowers 400 fr- 38
Kaitlin Sandeno 400fr- 40
Brooke Bennett 800 fr- ~51
Kaitlin Sandeno 800fr- ~47
Limited sample size here, but interesting to see a significant increase in stroke count in 3 of 4 swimmers when going from the middle distance 400 to the 800/1500.
Among masters swimmers, maybe you are right, but any D1 top tier program will do 20 to 30k daily, mostly with double and triple sessions. The higher level div3 programs do 15k easy, even more depending on the time of year. Fla Jill described the “hell in paradise” that’s about right. I remember going to Puerto Rico and doing 4 to 5 hours in double sessions, and covering 4000 - 4500/hour, and that’s long course meters. NCAA regs give you something like a 24 hour maximum per week of mandatory practices, and most programs go right to the max, and then have several hours of “optional” practices.
30,000 meters would take upwards of six hours, even at the elite level. I know that we did some 20K+ workouts when I was in HS and college, but never did we average that much, and that was back in the '60s when the belief was thet mega-yardage was the key. Most coaches these days are smarter than that.
I’m sure if you view my swim times and technique that you can instantly tell that swimming is my third of the three sports. And I’m sure this will show exactly how long it’s been since I was taught to swim, but I have to ask: pinkie first? I was always taught to lead with the elbow out of the water and draw the hand out at the hip, but I’ve never heard of pinkie first into the water before. I’ll have to try that and see how it feels. Is the only reasoning behind it that you might be pinching your shoulder movement? Or is there something more hydrodynamic behind it that the article doesn’t get into?
Although I was taught thumb first entry during my competitive days ('70-'76), pinkie first seems to make more sense. When your hand enters thumb first, you actually have to rotate it ~180 deg. to begin your “catch.” If you enter pinkie first, your hand is already in the catch position and you can begin your catch/pull a little quicker. I will have to try to spend some time retraining myself to do this, although I am still leery of the straight-through pull and early hand exit stuff.
Putting your pinky in first helps to alleviate stress on the shoulder as your arm goes forward. Easy way to do a little comparison is to take your hand first with the thumb down and move it from your shoulder to out in front of your body about 10 times. Then do the same thing with your pinky down and feel the difference in your shoulder. Anything during the pull from the hip back is wasted energy. Think about pulling straight to your belly button and then throwing your hand out to the side which ends up being at your hip. You’re better off using the energy to throw your arm forward.
You are right, Elwood, 30k actually takes upwards of 7 hours, and most coaches I hope are smarter than their predecessors from the 60’s, but the numbers I posted are straight from swimmers I have coached who are swimming for nationally ranked top ten D1 programs, and the coaches may be the same coaches you had in the 60’s! The yardage totals for one swimmer who attends a D1 school was an average of 125,000yds/week, and that was with a day off and 2 days at 10k. The totals are different for different specialties (and this kid is a miler) but even the sprinters do 110k/week. I am not saying that I agree that these totals are the answer (there are some great articles from the Aussie distance coaches that make great reading on the sacrifice of yardage for quality, and they definitely have results to back it up), but the coaches at some top programs still bang out a huge amount of yardage. My HS kids see a 15k day while over xmas break double sessions, but mostly see 8-10k a day, 6 days/week, and do it in 2.5 hours of pool time/day. I wouldn’t last 3 days averaging >20+k a day, my kids would go play basketball instead. As a swimming nation we have made great strides in some of the events on the olympic slate, but how come it took 20 something years to break Brian Goddell’s (sp) 1500m record, and the AR is still double digit seconds behind the WR? I wonder if the yardage we see these kids doing might have some bearing on this. But, believe it, the yardage is being done.