Everyone who watched coverage of the World Championships this year no doubt noticed Michael Phelps new distinct lope in his freestyle. I know a lot of other swimmers do this too, and their freaking fast, so this morning I asked my coach about it. She looked at me quizzically and said it's a very bad habit to have and if you don't do it naturally just forget about it.
But, Phelps didn't have this very obvious lope up to now, and he just broke 5 world records with it. So it doesn't seem like it can be that bad. I'm not to prove my coach wrong, I'm just curious.
So if anybody knows anything, please share. Why does it make some fast and for others it could be considered a bad habit? What's the trick to learning it? If it is a bad habit, why did Phelps bother to pronounce it?
Back in the days I read Usenet regularly, there was a guy who posted a lot in rec.sport.swimming about loping. His theory was that loping is actually beneficial and postulated the lope allows swimmers to "ride their own bow wave." It was an interesting theory. Not sure I buy it, but he really did spend a considerable amount of time thinking about this.
A Google search of rec.sport.swimming would probably return a lot of hits on "loping."
Back in the days I read Usenet regularly, there was a guy who posted a lot in rec.sport.swimming about loping. His theory was that loping is actually beneficial and postulated the lope allows swimmers to "ride their own bow wave." It was an interesting theory. Not sure I buy it, but he really did spend a considerable amount of time thinking about this.
A Google search of rec.sport.swimming would probably return a lot of hits on "loping."
