A friend of mine was helping me tonight and had me breath every other stroke. I understand this is standard technique, but wouldn’t keeping the head down create more drag in the water verse lifting it out?
Your body stays flatter in the water on the head down, but unless you are racing a 50, it is best to breath every stroke and just keep your mouth as low as possible.
Thinking about drag, what is faster, underwater dragging your whole body and just using your legs, or on top using legs and arms?? And not you personally, but the best swimmers…
1 Like
A 200 fly is a good way to start off and finish a triathlon swim.
1 Like
ITs funny that for decades I have been using(as well as most top lifeguard swimmers) the underwater dolphin when diving under waves. The lower water is moving much slower and now we know that you can also go quite fast just kicking.
In a recent ITU race I saw the fist guy use it off the pontoon, have been waiting for that for years. It has been an element that coaches have just not taught, or I suppose even thought about. But that first 100 in ITU is so critical, and if you can pop up a half body length ahead in the first 5 seconds, well you have set yourself up for a great swim. And the announcer did actually see it and mention it too.
Imagine now that the 20 year old cat is out of the bag, others will follow and it will be commonplace in the pro ranks, just like the double breathing has filtered into several of the men swimmers…
I’m not a great swimmer but if it’s wetsuit legal i always add in butterfly during the warm up. It doesn’t take much to get inside a Triathletes head and I’ll take every little bit i can get, haha.
So in life guard races when are you using that?
If its deep enough and after grabbig the sand in your hands, and pushing to the surface, push off more shallow and hold stream line a bit longer and take a fly kick?
Also any tips on catching broken waves?
Are you trying to do 2 - 3 strokes of swimming to build speed, then timing a powerful one arm stroke with extra kicks to surge onto it
I can never get enough speed doing it from treading water when its already broken, and doing a take off like you would on blue water
Ive caught a handful of broken waves just out mucking around and feel like the king of the beach when I do
Im talking from deeper water, when you cant really touch and bounce of the bottom onto the wake
The non breathing strokes still involve lifting the head a little bit out of the water. Just not as much. It takes energy to go up rather than forward. As an adult onset swimmer fly was the one stroke I couldn’t really do myself. The entire hip action thing cannot get my body to do it.
I’ve noticed some elite swimmers breathing two strokes and staying down on the third. I noticed this following Summer MacIntosh’s wins over the last few weeks, and I don’t recall noticing this breathing pattern before while watching the Olympics or anything.
I guess it makes sense, much like breathing every 2nd stroke on the freestyle is faster than every 3. What are your thoughts?
I’ll be looking for monty to provide his thoughts but my theory is that the stroke rate is just too high to always take a full breath every stroke. The other thought is that it’s just a “check yourself" stroke to keep better alignment.
Swimming is so ridiculous at that level, I mean SC championship meets they spend half a 200 underwater. Oxygen is king until it isn’t because the training is just at levels we can’t comprehend. It would not surprise me if the energy system for Summer is such that she can skip a breath every 3 strokes for better stroke form with no aerobic loss.
I do see that the women more than the men tend to hold their breath more often. I’m sure there is some physiological reason, but over the years the women do tend to swim more like the men eventually. Blo said it, air is king these days and more breathing is pretty dominant in anything over a 50. Phelps used to breath every stroke in the 100 a long time ago, and others have followed and it is the norm for the men. The tiny penalty they get with bringing their head up is trumped but getting the actual air onboard.
And Summer keep in mind is not being pushed at all in the 200fly or 400IM. I would imagine when that day comes, she might have to resort to a few extra breaths.. (-;
Also short course and long course are different styles. Although they are tending to merge with the advent of underwaters in events up to the 400/500’s now..Not long before a Marchand does the 1650/1500 and hits past those flags every time. I see even Ledecky is doing her last couple turns that way now, setting up for those hellacious sprints the distance folks are doing at the very end..
1 Like
Good discussion points here.
-
I don’t think anyone is ever going to be doing any real dolphn kicking for an entire 1650. Lets go with 9M being “real.” The concensus is that the most somoene can do is 9 or 10 great UW in succession before the CO2 buildup is too great. But maybe a 1500? No sure if the clearance better.
-
An intersting thing: Florida trains their swimmers to do no breathers on the last 25 of the 100 fly. That sucks.
1 Like
I remember when we were saying that about the 500, and Leon has now set the templet for future records. Although there aren’t any who swim it like he did yet, and they are approaching his record with those quicker pop ups. It really is about O2 management, under and on top of the water..
And yes I think every race now is subject to the head down, arms swinging, and straight arm pulls to the wall. Over time this will back out more and more too no doubt..
One of my favrotie race of all time.
But look what happens. He starts with 7 kicks off each wall does a few with 6, one with 5 and then bumps back to 7 at the end. He’s out in 1:57.9 and back in 2:03.3. He does not do a 500 with “full” UWs on all 20 walls. Since I said 9m was a full UW I’ll admit I am moving the goal post. Ha, its leon, I didn’t realize he was still going 9m with only 5 kicks. Silly me!
Yeah I think the shortest ones were right about 8m there in the middle of the race. I think his splits show fatiguing, we just don’t know how much of it was due to oxygen debt for UWs or oxygen debt due to ripping the snot out of the first 250.
It is CO2 buildup. It is really hard to blow out when you are doing dolphin kick because you are using your diaphram to undulate. And you are using the air in your lungs to bring yourself to the surface. If you go to the 10th turn you can see, Leon doesn’t exhale until he takes his first stroke.
Well he was 1;33 at the feet at the 200, so I think safe to say he went out a little hard. I mean anyone in the world who does not do underwaters like him would have been at best in the same boat, and of course the best in the world were in that heat fading more than him breathing right off their walls..I think it is just part of his natural stroke now, the way he swims naturally. Look at his 200 record of 1;28, just a little further underwater each turn, but same type of tempo, just a bit faster…
Blame it all on that damn Berkoff. Different stroke but “I couldda been a contender” if you invented the Berkoff Blast. A bit like the hi jump with Fosbery Flop. We all could have been faster if we used the underwater kicks before they made some rules about time spent underwater. There are some old You tubes of short course backstrokers taking a DQ and going underwater except for a breath on the turns and beating the hell out of the other swimmers.
I sucked at breastroke and picked up a few DQs in IMs for a bit of a dolfin kick off the breaststroke turns. Interesting to hear coaches talk about it being more important what you do off the walls and not in-between them. Especially short course.
Spoken from an old college male swimmer that would be lucky to make an average HS Girls travel squad with my fastest times.
.
My son (1:37 and 1:48 200 free/ IM age 15) says there’s only 1 speed underwater so he thinks Leon didn’t go out too hard but rather using the UW to maximum advantage means even splitting is impossible.
Not sure if that’s true but it’s an interesting point of view.