I have seen two swimming terms used in various posts but I'm not quite sure I understand the concept of either. The first is "Austrailian Crawl", which I believe may pertain to the recovery of the arms in freestyle. The other is "Front End Butterfly" and I have no idea as to what that refers to. Can someone describe the technique behind these two phrases? thanks in advance
Former Member
For ' Australian crawl' this is from my own post from an earlier thread.
{ As I understand it the main feature of " Australian crawl" is the pronounced shoulder shift forward during entry. The shoulder is held high and the catch is acheived by taking the time to get the hand and forearm at 90 degrees to the water surface, before initiating the pull. The pull is actually quite shallow. The upper arm remains high and almost parallell to the water surface during this.
This differs to " normal " freestyle where the shoulder is dropped during the entry phase and the shoulders roll more, leading to the pull being deeper in the water.
This is covered in Swimming technique magazine , july-sept article. " Thoughts on the crawl stroke" www.swiminfo.com/.../sw...07-01st_art.asp There is also an article in Swimming World magazine, January 2000, titled "the New Australian Crawl" that covers this in depth. the last article has a good photo sequence but is not available online. }
For " front end fly" that i have mentioned in a few posts. This is fairly new and differs to traditional fly in a few key points:
1- early inscull ( to under chest ) at beginning of underwater pull phase.
2- Pulling back only to where maximum force can be maintained against the water. Hands do not pull all the way back to the hips.
3-A shorter, inertial recovery due to shorter pull.
4- Leaning forward position of head, eyes looking down throughout stroke. Chin is not jutted forward to breath with raising up of head.
5- Simultaneous landing of head and hands, to create " throw weight " effect.
6- Less emphasis on kick, more on core body undulation.
7- Faster stroke tempo, due mainly to shorter pull and faster arm recovery.
Jenny Thompson is a "front-end flyer".
Most of this info on fly is from Pablo Morales chapter in the " the swim coaching bible ", publisher " human kinetics ". This is an excellent book.
Try the search function as well on this site. It is good.
