When considering the overall speed of swimmers in the past and present it seems that although times are still dropping for swim events there is a "dropping off"graphically of time improvement..now do you think this could mean that there will be an ultimate saturated speed time that will never get beat?i think that unless we evolve say webbed feet or the like then this is possible....thoughts?
Parents
Former Member
Originally posted by knelson
Slightly off this topic (oh yeah, I guess the whole thread has drifted a bit, hasn't it?), but I've often wondered if someone will discover, or I guess invent, a new stroke that is faster than front crawl. Just because crawl is the fastest stroke now, doesn't mean there isn't some other way we could swim that would be faster.
Never say never, but...
In order to do so, there would be two critical issues that the new form would have to address:
1) decreased resistance
2) greater power
It's hard to see either happening because in a good crawl a very minimal surface area (basically the area of the shoulders) is presented in the direction of travel. Decreasing it in any other position in the water seems unlikely. Of course, there are other types of resistance at work but, again, crawl seems to have a best balance between competing necessities. In terms of power generation, bringing the arm in the crawl's direction is a very stong motion. Add to that, the body core's ability to contribute in the crawl and I think it's hard to see anything that might replace it.
The other thing that speaks against it is historical: Typically, humans have a pretty good track record of improving performance through discovery of new ways to do things. The crawl has been the unchallenged speed champ for over 100 years and the only changes have been refinements to the technique; not a wholesale change.
SO... under the current rules and state of human evolution, I'll bet that we are only looking at refinement to the crawl and not a paradigm shift.
-LBJ
Originally posted by knelson
Slightly off this topic (oh yeah, I guess the whole thread has drifted a bit, hasn't it?), but I've often wondered if someone will discover, or I guess invent, a new stroke that is faster than front crawl. Just because crawl is the fastest stroke now, doesn't mean there isn't some other way we could swim that would be faster.
Never say never, but...
In order to do so, there would be two critical issues that the new form would have to address:
1) decreased resistance
2) greater power
It's hard to see either happening because in a good crawl a very minimal surface area (basically the area of the shoulders) is presented in the direction of travel. Decreasing it in any other position in the water seems unlikely. Of course, there are other types of resistance at work but, again, crawl seems to have a best balance between competing necessities. In terms of power generation, bringing the arm in the crawl's direction is a very stong motion. Add to that, the body core's ability to contribute in the crawl and I think it's hard to see anything that might replace it.
The other thing that speaks against it is historical: Typically, humans have a pretty good track record of improving performance through discovery of new ways to do things. The crawl has been the unchallenged speed champ for over 100 years and the only changes have been refinements to the technique; not a wholesale change.
SO... under the current rules and state of human evolution, I'll bet that we are only looking at refinement to the crawl and not a paradigm shift.
-LBJ
