Ok, let me start this with what I believe to be a fact and if its not may make the rest of the discussion mute.
Freestyle is not the fastest way to propel your body through the water.
Supporting evidence: They limit how much of a dolphin kick freestylers can do and they all do the max cause its faster.
So Why do Triathletes swim Freestyle? Now a dolphin kick might use to much legs and lungs? Not sure how you would breath and go back down, but what about some other maybe unyet thought up swim technique. Does anybody know of anybody looking at this?
The dolphin kick is very fast, and is used to some pool swimmers advantage off the walls in freestyle and backstroke swims. BUT, it is very strenuous on the human body and would not be of much use to an open water distance swimmer. Stick with frestyle.
Dolphin KICK is faster underwater true, but freestyle SWIMMING is much faster for any other situation. If Tom Malchow, Olympic butterfly medalist doesn’t swim fly in a tri relay, I wouldn’t think you should…
Proper dolphin kick does not allow you to rotate as well. Hence you lose power from your arms and use more legs, ultimately leading to a slower time and more fatique in the legs. Not good for triathlon.
I believe from a pure mathematical perspective Butterfly is theoretically the fastest stroke. However the combination of forces required to do it properly fatiques the body so much that by the time the elites reach a fter 50 metres the speed advantage is more than overcome.
I know I am faster over a 25 when doing fly, but by the time I reach a 50 my free is a full second faster. Could be because of the turn never really tracked it in a long course pool.
If you put a body in a flume, dolphin kick is the most efficient way to get through the water. But it also zaps way too much energy and you redline v. quickly if you’re doing it so it’s faster than freestyle. If you watch the fish, most don’t underwater dolphin kick as far on a 200 as they do on a 100 or 50 because it’s just so incredibly tiring.
Dolphin kicking may be the fastest way to propel yourself through the water, however, what about if you take into account trying to breathe as well. Or perhaps you can master the full dolphin swim and vault yourself out of the water like real dolphins do. I would think trying to get any type of quality breath in would slow you down considerably. But maybe my box is harder to get out than yours.
Dolphin or fly kick is faster under water fro two reasons; first you can do a much larger kick in both directions using your whole body to generate power. That does not hold true for top of the water swimming, since you are limited to basically half a kick. But since your whole body in incorporated into underwater dolphin kicking it is very demanding on the lungs and requires a lot of O2. Second underwater swimming actually offers less drag than top of water swimming. You may think that since my whole body is surrounded by water when under water the drag must be higher. But top of the water swimming has more drag because you are actually about 80-85% submerged even though you are on top. And breaking the surface tension of water requires far more effort than frictional drag created by water moving over the body.
Go get yourself a set of Whale or Dolphin lungs and you’ll be all set!
