Freestyle Stroke Question

In 1969 or 1970 Doc Counsilman filmed Mark Spitz at IU with an underwater camera. He attached lights to Spitz's hands and had him swim against a grid backdrop so his hand movements would show up clearly. When he developed the film he was stunned to see that Spitz's hands exited the water ahead of where they entered. After observing that, Doc theorized the idea of "lift" vs. "drag" propulsion for the first time. "Lift" has since been discounted as an explanation, but all the same there's no question that Spitz could not have been pushing water back but had found a way to make his hand stand still (anchor) and move his body past it. While not disputing that zero slippage is what you should aim for and what you want it to feel like, I think your conclusions are as erroneous as Doc's were. The key words here are "enter" and "exit" not "catch" and "release". Consider the catchup drill, the hand enters the water, moves forward slightly if it wasn't fully extended at entry and then, along with the rest of the body, moves forward a large distance as the opposite arm executes the pull, then moves forward some more as the swimmer continues to kick as the opposite arm recovers, it then makes the catch and pulls. Even a not very skilled swimmer can probably slip less than the distance the hand has moved forward since entry. I am not suggesting that Spitz was swimming in this fashion but illustrating that the analysis is flawed by failing to take into account the contribution of the opposite arm and the kick. When an explanation violates basic principles of physics the explanation needs to be reexamined. The people who argued for lift over drag and talked about Bernoulli would have been wise to check with someone in their physics or engineering departments who could have told them that the hand is not shaped in a way that allows Bernoulli's principle to apply. They might also have observed some swimmers and noted that no one was approaching race speed while doing their sculling drills. They might also have done some experiments on the magnitude of forces generated by sculling and compared that to the forces needed to move a body through the water at race speed. I suspect that the "value" of the "vault over your arms", in addition to setting up hand and arm positions for maximum drag/minimal slip is that this mental image causes people to picture a movement in which they make use of their lats. When you picture pulling yourself up on the edge of the pool or vaulting over a lane line you intuitively tense your lat muscles. On the issue of power from hip rotation, it is interesting to consider butterfly, where there is no long axis rotation. Is there a totally different explanation for the very similar arm action based on short axis rotation? Or is the rotation more about positioning than transmission of power? I think it was in Swimming Fastest that the author cited a study that showed that the "kinetic chain" may be a viable "feel" but that it isn't feasible in terms of physics. Again, I'm not disputing the utility of the anchored hand "feel", its just that if you get to the point where one actually believes that Spitz's arms were moving forward during the pull then that leads one off in a wrong direction, witness the whole lift based swimming dead end. And again, I am not being adversarial, I am just attempting to explore this topic.

In 1969 or 1970 Doc Counsilman filmed Mark Spitz at IU with an underwater camera. He attached lights to Spitz's hands and had him swim against a grid backdrop so his hand movements would show up clearly. When he developed the film he was stunned to see that Spitz's hands exited the water ahead of where they entered. After observing that, Doc theorized the idea of "lift" vs. "drag" propulsion for the first time. "Lift" has since been discounted as an explanation, but all the same there's no question that Spitz could not have been pushing water back but had found a way to make his hand stand still (anchor) and move his body past it. While not disputing that zero slippage is what you should aim for and what you want it to feel like, I think your conclusions are as erroneous as Doc's were. The key words here are "enter" and "exit" not "catch" and "release". Consider the catchup drill, the hand enters the water, moves forward slightly if it wasn't fully extended at entry and then, along with the rest of the body, moves forward a large distance as the opposite arm executes the pull, then moves forward some more as the swimmer continues to kick as the opposite arm recovers, it then makes the catch and pulls. Even a not very skilled swimmer can probably slip less than the distance the hand has moved forward since entry. I am not suggesting that Spitz was swimming in this fashion but illustrating that the analysis is flawed by failing to take into account the contribution of the opposite arm and the kick. When an explanation violates basic principles of physics the explanation needs to be reexamined. The people who argued for lift over drag and talked about Bernoulli would have been wise to check with someone in their physics or engineering departments who could have told them that the hand is not shaped in a way that allows Bernoulli's principle to apply. They might also have observed some swimmers and noted that no one was approaching race speed while doing their sculling drills. They might also have done some experiments on the magnitude of forces generated by sculling and compared that to the forces needed to move a body through the water at race speed. I suspect that the "value" of the "vault over your arms", in addition to setting up hand and arm positions for maximum drag/minimal slip is that this mental image causes people to picture a movement in which they make use of their lats. When you picture pulling yourself up on the edge of the pool or vaulting over a lane line you intuitively tense your lat muscles. On the issue of power from hip rotation, it is interesting to consider butterfly, where there is no long axis rotation. Is there a totally different explanation for the very similar arm action based on short axis rotation? Or is the rotation more about positioning than transmission of power? I think it was in Swimming Fastest that the author cited a study that showed that the "kinetic chain" may be a viable "feel" but that it isn't feasible in terms of physics. Again, I'm not disputing the utility of the anchored hand "feel", its just that if you get to the point where one actually believes that Spitz's arms were moving forward during the pull then that leads one off in a wrong direction, witness the whole lift based swimming dead end. And again, I am not being adversarial, I am just attempting to explore this topic.