Sculling

RE: Sculling

Former Member — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 13:43:44 GMT

I have all of my swimmers do feet first sculling on the back. I have a couple reasons for this: 1- It makes the swimmer use their core muscles to hold their body up without tensing otherwise this will effect their scull. 2- Feet first sculling is just about the only scull that you can do without cheating. With a lot of the other scull drills, the swimmer can get lazy and pull rather then scull. This makes it easier for the coach to ensure that the swimmers are doing it properly when you have a big squad.

RE: Sculling

jim thornton — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 09:47:47 GMT

Ernest Maglischo, arguably swimming science's brightest mind, was a huge proponent of the Bernouli principle, sculling, the hand as foil, etc. In his newly released revision of his classis Swimming Fast (which begat Swimming Faster), a book that weighs approximately 5 lbs and is called Swimming Fastest, Maglischo repudiates his own former view, now claiming that the stroke is like an oar going through the water--no sculling benefits to propulsion. He is incredibly thorough in his argument, citing all kinds of tests involving casts of human hands in various aquatic test chambers, etc. Frankly, the stuff is so complicated I don't have the time (and probably not the intellect) to understand it. But I just wanted to recommend this book to any physicists out there--plus add the fact that sculling may just end up being one of swimming's myths.

RE: Sculling

Former Member — Tue, 04 May 2004 05:11:46 GMT

What a previous poster said about "feeling" the water is pretty true. What happens is that during a practice, you work to store muscle movements in your muscle memory (that's an actual term "muscle memory). When you get out of the water, your muscle memory immediately starts to degrade. Your muscles literally forget how to swim. Sculling is good to help you relearn some of the smaller variations you can make in a stroking motion. The best example of this is if you are a swimmer who swims every day, but miss three or four days for some reason. Your first workout back may be kinda tough. Not because you're out of shape, but because your muscles have literally forgotten the finer points of the motions. In terms of getting better at strokes, also like sculling to isolate certain stroke motions from full pulls. We do a butterfly sculling drill that is actually counter-intuative to how most people think they should scull for butterfly. It leads to a more advanced timing of the stroke, but we would never get there if we didn't start with sculling drills. We use the same drill for breaststroke and get the same result. The debate on Bernoulli's principle goes back and forth. We could argue that one all day, so I won't make any comments about that. Ryan@ICoachSwimming.com www.ICoachSwimming.com

RE: Sculling

mattson — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 11:50:27 GMT

Originally posted by Karen Duggan ...says I should go into a discertation about Bernoulli's Principle of lift... I, personally, have no idea what I just typed... Just make a reference to any of Colwin's books, as he goes into (sometimes gory) detail about water and lift and sculling. :cool:

RE: Sculling

Karen Duggan — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 11:50:12 GMT

I have always thought that the benefit of sculling was to get a "feel" for the water. Everything is slowed way down with a concentration on actually moving through the water efficiently, if that makes sense. There are "a ton" of different drills, depends on the stroke. My husband, an exercise physiology GEEK, says I should go into a discertation about Bernoulli's Principle of lift and how that relates to forward propulsion in a horizontal plane and how the drill helps you determine the aquatic compliment of stall angles (in an aircraft) to figure out which angle will generate the most speed. Did I mention in addition to being a GEEK he was a pilot in the Navy? I, personally, have no idea what I just typed... I much prefer my answer ;) Pretend it's the 60's and if it feels good, do it! :p