Core muscles and arms

In the overgrown jungle known as "the Fastest Age", this idea came up: Originally posted by gull80 I thought that anchoring was more a figure of speech, although I did read in TI that your arms/shoulders are much less important than your core muscles (which I still find hard to believe). I brought up the baseball pitcher analogy that is popular. Craig mentioned he knew of that example, but the pitcher gets to push off the ground. I gave a counter example of throwing in water polo (in an all-deep pool ;) ). At that point, we both got sucked back into... ah... another discussion. I wanted to start this thread, to see if it would yield any interesting insights. I was talking to a Masters swimmer who went to a training camp at the Olympic Training Center, and she mentioned that the main emphasis was to engage the core muscles during your swim. I'm certain that I am not using ideal power transfer. I hope that I am not misrepresenting Craig, in saying he is not sure about how this is done.