OK this sounds like a stupid question but someone at the pool told me that my hand needs to be open with my fingers apart when I swim. i normally cup it which is what I thought was the best way. Today I tried my fingers together and my thumb out a little bit from the hand.
The cupped hand seemed best but what do the experts say?
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Former Member
Lindsay, you are missing something major here. Your actual velocity = Force you apply to the water - Drag ( all of the combined drag forces that act on your body ).
Your body may in fact not accelerate in actual velocity ( relative to when you push off the wall ) but F=MA is in effect with each propulsive phase of your stroke. If it was not you would slow to a stop in a few metres and never move again !
Force is generated by hand and arm and the fore-foot, during the kick. It is also obvious from the equation that the hand has to Accelerate during the arm movement to maintain and increase the force applied.
That is the hand moves from almost at rest ( hand entry - catch) to moving rapidly at the end of the arm action. This movement, though, has to be a controlled acceleration as Fluid Dynamics will punish hasty movements by rapidly increasing drag and premature shedding of the propulsive vortex. Look in Cecil Colwins "Breakthrough swimming" for detailed info on this.
Smooth, controlled application of force, while minimising drag and conserving momentum is the best way of swimming. Learning how to maintain this at high speed is the tricky part !
We don't know very much about how swimmers actually move through the water. Previous studies have not been set up very well. The dominant theory in the last 30 years was of Lift dominated propulsion. This lead to talk of "sweeps " etc. One of the main studies for this involved a model of a hand on a stick, suspended in a steady flow and the resultant forces were analysed ! In fact lift forces are quite unimportant in the conditions of " unsteady flow " that apply in actual swimming as the boundary layer cannot attach itself to the hand properly to allow lift forces to operate !
Until we can do studies where sensors are attached to swimmers and analysis is based on what occurs when they actually move in the water then we will not know for sure what is going on.
Lindsay, you are missing something major here. Your actual velocity = Force you apply to the water - Drag ( all of the combined drag forces that act on your body ).
Your body may in fact not accelerate in actual velocity ( relative to when you push off the wall ) but F=MA is in effect with each propulsive phase of your stroke. If it was not you would slow to a stop in a few metres and never move again !
Force is generated by hand and arm and the fore-foot, during the kick. It is also obvious from the equation that the hand has to Accelerate during the arm movement to maintain and increase the force applied.
That is the hand moves from almost at rest ( hand entry - catch) to moving rapidly at the end of the arm action. This movement, though, has to be a controlled acceleration as Fluid Dynamics will punish hasty movements by rapidly increasing drag and premature shedding of the propulsive vortex. Look in Cecil Colwins "Breakthrough swimming" for detailed info on this.
Smooth, controlled application of force, while minimising drag and conserving momentum is the best way of swimming. Learning how to maintain this at high speed is the tricky part !
We don't know very much about how swimmers actually move through the water. Previous studies have not been set up very well. The dominant theory in the last 30 years was of Lift dominated propulsion. This lead to talk of "sweeps " etc. One of the main studies for this involved a model of a hand on a stick, suspended in a steady flow and the resultant forces were analysed ! In fact lift forces are quite unimportant in the conditions of " unsteady flow " that apply in actual swimming as the boundary layer cannot attach itself to the hand properly to allow lift forces to operate !
Until we can do studies where sensors are attached to swimmers and analysis is based on what occurs when they actually move in the water then we will not know for sure what is going on.
