I finally made it to one of the local coached workouts and all in all it was a pretty positive experience. One of the comments about my stroke was that my hand entered the water in-line with the crown of my head. I was told that it should enter more in line with my shoulder. I've been practicing with this for the past 2 1/2 weeks and it seems to have negatively affected my roll and my stroke count. I can't seem to get a good glide at the end of my stroke, and when I roll, my arm is out away from my head and seems to be creating more drag. Am I missing something here? Was I told partial info? incorrect info? or am I not looking at the problem correctly?
Thanks John
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Former Member
Considering that Hoogenband holds the world record for the 100m long course and won gold in that event in the last two Olympics, I think one would be justified in pausing before dismissing his style. One could argue that he trades off a longer body for continuous propulsion. I only have one university course in hydrodynamics and we didn't cover anything remotely as complicated as a swimmer, which I think is largely beyond the current state of the art, but my engineering intuition tells me that Froude numbers are not the explanation of why a long extension of the leading arm is worthwhile, simple streamlining combined with the extended reach achieved by lifting the lead shoulder while lowering the opposite shoulder while completing the pull are much more plausible in my view. I suspect the "morphing tugboat" explanation has no scientific basis.
In any case, the image I posted was from near the finish of the race and may not represent his typical stroke. My point is that it can be misleading to draw conclusions from static photos of swimmers, especially if there is someone in the same photo with a different style that is actually beating the person one is using as the model. I looked at several videos of Thorpe and generally could not detect any pause between the end of his pull and the start of his catch. If you want to see someone that does, check out Hackett. Which brings up another issue, which was partially alluded to, giving specific advice about freestyle timing without qualifying whether you are talking about 50m sprints or 1500m races, or open water marathons is dangerous, as is not recognizing the broad variations in style that occur even at the elite level. It is like the thread about kicking where some people tried to generalize about kicking without even qualifying the distance.
Brought to you by the committee against pseudo-scientific explanations of swimming technique. ;)
Considering that Hoogenband holds the world record for the 100m long course and won gold in that event in the last two Olympics, I think one would be justified in pausing before dismissing his style. One could argue that he trades off a longer body for continuous propulsion. I only have one university course in hydrodynamics and we didn't cover anything remotely as complicated as a swimmer, which I think is largely beyond the current state of the art, but my engineering intuition tells me that Froude numbers are not the explanation of why a long extension of the leading arm is worthwhile, simple streamlining combined with the extended reach achieved by lifting the lead shoulder while lowering the opposite shoulder while completing the pull are much more plausible in my view. I suspect the "morphing tugboat" explanation has no scientific basis.
In any case, the image I posted was from near the finish of the race and may not represent his typical stroke. My point is that it can be misleading to draw conclusions from static photos of swimmers, especially if there is someone in the same photo with a different style that is actually beating the person one is using as the model. I looked at several videos of Thorpe and generally could not detect any pause between the end of his pull and the start of his catch. If you want to see someone that does, check out Hackett. Which brings up another issue, which was partially alluded to, giving specific advice about freestyle timing without qualifying whether you are talking about 50m sprints or 1500m races, or open water marathons is dangerous, as is not recognizing the broad variations in style that occur even at the elite level. It is like the thread about kicking where some people tried to generalize about kicking without even qualifying the distance.
Brought to you by the committee against pseudo-scientific explanations of swimming technique. ;)
