Swim smarts: Engineers? Drag increases as speed increases?
Former Member
I overheard one of the local club team coaches prepping the kids before a technique based drill make the statement that the faster you go the more drag you encounter. He was having them ensure they kept their shoulder to cheek on their free sets to narrow the frontal profile. While I am not questioning the coach I just wanted to know if one of you smart Masters swimmers might be able to dumb that down for me.
So to ensure I lay this out to the best of my understanding which is probably wrong: for two physical clones swimming freestyle in lanes next to each other with completely identical technical strokes down to the mm. The drag for the 1:20 pace swimmer will be less than the swimmer peeling off 1:10 splits? I'm a big dummy so wrapping my head around that idea just isn't sinking in.
Thanks for the Saturday morning hydrodynamics lesson!
1) when a swimmer is swimming freestyle, what if, the faster a swimmer moves through the water, the less of his body is actually in the water. Like a boat
This is important because swimming at the surface creates an additional type of drag: wave drag. Just like you said, you want to ride as high as possible, like a boat does, to minimize this drag. The equation Swimosaur quoted above is for pressure or form drag. The added wave drag at the surface is why underwater kicking can be faster than surface swimming.
1) when a swimmer is swimming freestyle, what if, the faster a swimmer moves through the water, the less of his body is actually in the water. Like a boat
This is important because swimming at the surface creates an additional type of drag: wave drag. Just like you said, you want to ride as high as possible, like a boat does, to minimize this drag. The equation Swimosaur quoted above is for pressure or form drag. The added wave drag at the surface is why underwater kicking can be faster than surface swimming.
