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!
I wonder if a near maximum velocity exist for surface swimming, where going any faster wouldn't be possible, any remaining room for improvement is in starts, reaction, and underwater streamline, and how close current records are to it.
Humans are not very good boats,but apply enough force and the human form will plane(think being towed by a boat or body surfing a relatively large wave.) When planing form drag decreases greatly,but I don't know what happens to wave drag.Anyway,I doubt there is a firm limit as to how fast a person can swim.
I wonder if a near maximum velocity exist for surface swimming, where going any faster wouldn't be possible, any remaining room for improvement is in starts, reaction, and underwater streamline, and how close current records are to it.
Humans are not very good boats,but apply enough force and the human form will plane(think being towed by a boat or body surfing a relatively large wave.) When planing form drag decreases greatly,but I don't know what happens to wave drag.Anyway,I doubt there is a firm limit as to how fast a person can swim.
