Gennadi Turetski, whose two most successful swimmers are Popov and Klim, made recently a presentation for Russian swimming coaches with a video demonstration. Below are a few points from the freestyle part of this presentation that I found insightful but practical in the same time.
Swimming movements originates from the mass center – the lower back.
Having entered the water from a dive you must transfer the motion into a horizontal vector as soon as possible. Popov’s first movement underwater is his legs’ moving up to throw away the water that is trailing his body
A javelin thrown from the deck enters the water through a hole and glides in a horizontal direction without any unnecessary force it is rigid. In the pool Gennadi showed a start drill that I found very good for the development body as a rigid part and learning to forward your energy to the other end of the pool. You put one foot on the edge of the pool and the other leg kneels on the deck and push off. You should be able to do a long horizontal glide.
During your swim you focus on forward movement, not on forward force.
During pull you position your thumb outward for a more efficient catch.
One hand’s catch and the other’s exit occur simultaneously
In freestyle you don’t pull. Instead you move yourself forward over the pulling hand.
While finishing you don’t shorten you stroke to increase the rate. Instead you lengthen the stroke and turn on an intense kick
In a 50m sprint the most important indicator is the swimmer’s speed at the 15m mark
Rhythm is very important during a turn because the right rhythm helps you to push off the wall with the rebound wave thus gaining a 0.5m advantage. You count like: One (first hand entry), Two (second hand entry) and Three (rebound. Not push off, but rebound). Popov seems to do that amazingly well at both low and high speed.
Gennadi believes that fast kick has low amplitude and high rate.
And I like this statement of his:
“In the race you don’t go to the wall, you go through the wall” Probably like in life.
Dmitri
Former Member
There are several contradictions in there surrounding the topic of pulling or moving oneself over the "pulling hand". Anyhow, I don't buy the remark about not pulling in freestyle. Maybe it's just semantics, I don't know.
What he might had meant, and this is my interpreattion, is that you don't use your arm for pulling. Instead you use the arm as a lever to move your body through a high resistant environment.
There is a logic in that, as taller swimmers (have longer lever) are able to creat a greater momentum applying the same force as shorter swimmers. Then you translate a greater momentum into a higher speed.
Dmitri
Here's another video, where at 1:37 you see his right hand, under water,
as it catches water and starts the pull. His thumb points to his left.
www.youtube.com/watch
Here's a strange thing I noticed
In that 13 minute video of Popov, around the 4 minutes mark,
you will notice that he does that thumb opening thing only with his right hand; his left hand has (or looks like it has) all five fingers together. swimmingscience.blogspot.com/.../alexander-popov.html
Cheers
It depends on the lever action, are we using arm muscles to make this lever work or is it those great big muscles in the back?
The muscles in the back are what we use.
A javelin thrown from the deck enters the water through a hole and glides in a horizontal direction without any unnecessary force it is rigid. In the pool Gennadi showed a start drill that I found very good for the development body as a rigid part and learning to forward your energy to the other end of the pool. You put one foot on the edge of the pool and the other leg kneels on the deck and push off. You should be able to do a long horizontal glide.
I'm sure we will get into a war about technique shortly as a result of the original post, but I didn't want this point to get lost in the resulting mayhem. Simply put, this is a brilliant drill. It is brilliant for 2 reasons:
1) It teaches transfer of momentum to extend the horizontal glide - that's obvious.
2) Less obvious is that due to the shallower angle at which one hits the water, it causes the hole you make when you hit the water to be bigger, thereby forcing you to concentrate on getting the hole as small as possible to extent the glide.
Both points would really help someone starting off the blocks. If I were a sprinter (I'm not, thank God), I'd practice this quite a bit.
Just my $0.02.
-LBJ
I'm sure we will get into a war about technique shortly as a result of the original post, but I didn't want this point to get lost in the resulting mayhem. Simply put, this is a brilliant drill. It is brilliant for 2 reasons:
1) It teaches transfer of momentum to extend the horizontal glide - that's obvious.
2) Less obvious is that due to the shallower angle at which one hits the water, it causes the hole you make when you hit the water to be bigger, thereby forcing you to concentrate on getting the hole as small as possible to extent the glide.
Both points would really help someone starting off the blocks. If I were a sprinter (I'm not, thank God), I'd practice this quite a bit.
Just my $0.02.
-LBJ
I estimate the actual worth of your 2 cents to be approximately 1.793 cents LBJ....but its only a rough approximation I admit LOL!:D
Newmastersswimmer
I'm sure we will get into a war about technique shortly as a result of the original post, but I didn't want this point to get lost in the resulting mayhem. Simply put, this is a brilliant drill. It is brilliant for 2 reasons:
1) It teaches transfer of momentum to extend the horizontal glide - that's obvious.
2) Less obvious is that due to the shallower angle at which one hits the water, it causes the hole you make when you hit the water to be bigger, thereby forcing you to concentrate on getting the hole as small as possible to extent the glide.
Both points would really help someone starting off the blocks. If I were a sprinter (I'm not, thank God), I'd practice this quite a bit.
Just my $0.02.
-LBJ
Leonard,
I found that this drill helps to develop another important element of a good dive - "a rigid structure" (arms/body/legs) that enters the water like "a javelin" or "a torpedo". A 99.9% of master swimmers lack this skill probably due to a declinig core body strength. He had mentioned "the rigid structure" several times.
I enjoyed practicing this drill although because you improve your sprinting performance without both a physical pain and a taste of lactate in your mouth.
Dmitri
Ian it has been my thought for years to have the thumb away from the index finger.
So many swimmers think by holding every thing tight and close together they are grabbing more water. Not only do you not get more water it causes muscle tension in the forearms. Thanks again Dmitri for bringing this forward.
Some one some where talks about the thumb as being the only part of the human arm/hand appendage that works like a bird's wing. If you keep your thumb spread from your other fingers, you will creat lift. My thumbs are set so low on my hand they barely get up to my fingers. I naturally swim wiht my thumbs seperated from my hand. I have a lot of webbing between my thumbs & hands also. When I have on gloves, I can really feel the difference.
Nice story, Dmitri.
The Turetski thread got one of the best SNR:s (signal-to-noise Ratio) ever recorded on the forum :p
I'm trying the start drill soon.
The three most beautiful languages, spoken word or music:
Portugese
Italian
Russian
RecreationalSwimmer,
Turetski, like a few good coaches, has a unique ability to observe and communicate key points of swimming which may seem trivial but make you think. And to experiment that adds to the fun of master swimming.
As the most beautiful language #3 I would place the Ukranian ahead of the Russian. However, the Russian music is richer because we are deeper thinkers. (A deep thinker is that who asks himself "Why am I so sorrow today?")
Leonard,
I found that this drill helps to develop another important element of a good dive - "a rigid structure" (arms/body/legs) that enters the water like "a javelin" or "a torpedo". A 99.9% of master swimmers lack this skill probably due to a declinig core body strength. He had mentioned "the rigid structure" several times.
I enjoyed practicing this drill although because you improve your sprinting performance without both a physical pain and a taste of lactate in your mouth.
Dmitri
Nice story, Dmitri.
The Turetski thread got one of the best SNR:s (signal-to-noise Ratio) ever recorded on the forum :p
I'm trying the start drill soon.
The three most beautiful languages, spoken word or music:
Portugese
Italian
Russian
