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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Hey Mark, you're right, but I don't think I was being picky, while a large paddle wheel will produce an approximation of constant velocity straight line motion the quoted description of how F=ma applies to swimming was totally wrong.
After a quick read of the paper on propulsion and vortices it isn't clear to me that the vortices produce propulsion, it seems to me that are a side effect of propulsion that might be useful in analyzing the efficiency of the propulsive movements, if some way to observe the vortices can be figured out.
Gareth, you are probably right that we won't reason our way to a record time, I was just curious if there was anyone here with a more solid knowledge of fluid dynamics than my own that might enlighten me on what the dominant forces are. I admit that I get irritated when I read technical material that seems incorrect, and several sections of Breakthrough Swimming drove me up the wall. The thing I did find useful was the section on the importance of timing, even though Colwin somewhat mashed up the concept of momentum. Realizing the importance of timing and avoiding loss of momentum did actually help me understand and improve my butterfly stroke.
Hey Mark, you're right, but I don't think I was being picky, while a large paddle wheel will produce an approximation of constant velocity straight line motion the quoted description of how F=ma applies to swimming was totally wrong.
After a quick read of the paper on propulsion and vortices it isn't clear to me that the vortices produce propulsion, it seems to me that are a side effect of propulsion that might be useful in analyzing the efficiency of the propulsive movements, if some way to observe the vortices can be figured out.
Gareth, you are probably right that we won't reason our way to a record time, I was just curious if there was anyone here with a more solid knowledge of fluid dynamics than my own that might enlighten me on what the dominant forces are. I admit that I get irritated when I read technical material that seems incorrect, and several sections of Breakthrough Swimming drove me up the wall. The thing I did find useful was the section on the importance of timing, even though Colwin somewhat mashed up the concept of momentum. Realizing the importance of timing and avoiding loss of momentum did actually help me understand and improve my butterfly stroke.
