Why certain strokes?

there's a rather interesting project that USA Swimming undertook around the 2000 Olympics. it's rather dense, lots of numbers and stats, but gives some insight into the connection between body type (ie genetics) and specialization in given strokes (treating sprint free and distance free as separate "strokes"). rather than getting yelled at for linking to the study, go to USA Swimming's website and type in "Anthropometrics" in the search feature. the first link that comes up is what i'm refering to... granted this is for elite swimmers, but it's still rather interesting, if you don't mind all the numbers. (just a hint, if you scroll almost the whole way down, there's a quick summary for women and men in each stroke.) and as an aside, i know i fit into the backstroke category pretty well, especially the lack of vertical jump :laugh2: Thanks Mollie. Fly is probably the best fit for me, except that I do have fairly long arms/torso. I guess that helps with backstroke. Fly was my best stroke for most of my age group career and I was generally better at 100s than 200s. I look nothing like the freestyle sprinters they describe whatsoever. I think this season I was ranked higher in the long axis strokes -- contradicting my fly body. (I guess the fly body needs better fly shoulders.) I don't know about this genetics thing. Other swimmers in my family are/were evilstrokers. If they're not swimmers, they're long distance runners.

there's a rather interesting project that USA Swimming undertook around the 2000 Olympics. it's rather dense, lots of numbers and stats, but gives some insight into the connection between body type (ie genetics) and specialization in given strokes (treating sprint free and distance free as separate "strokes"). rather than getting yelled at for linking to the study, go to USA Swimming's website and type in "Anthropometrics" in the search feature. the first link that comes up is what i'm refering to... granted this is for elite swimmers, but it's still rather interesting, if you don't mind all the numbers. (just a hint, if you scroll almost the whole way down, there's a quick summary for women and men in each stroke.) and as an aside, i know i fit into the backstroke category pretty well, especially the lack of vertical jump :laugh2: Thanks Mollie. Fly is probably the best fit for me, except that I do have fairly long arms/torso. I guess that helps with backstroke. Fly was my best stroke for most of my age group career and I was generally better at 100s than 200s. I look nothing like the freestyle sprinters they describe whatsoever. I think this season I was ranked higher in the long axis strokes -- contradicting my fly body. (I guess the fly body needs better fly shoulders.) I don't know about this genetics thing. Other swimmers in my family are/were evilstrokers. If they're not swimmers, they're long distance runners.