Does anyone know if submerged dolphin kicks are always better than submerged freestyle (or backstroke) kicks?
I find fly kicks very tiring and slow for my particular body. It seems I can go as fast if not faster off the walls kicking free or back underwater--and these take much less energy.
If SDK is the obviously preferred approach, can anybody provide actual evidence--swimming science studies, for instance--that compare the same person's speed doing both? Similarly, is there some physical cause for why split-leg kicking should be intrinsically slower than legs-together kicking?
Obviously, you have to do SDK on fly and *** pullouts (if you are going to do any kick at all.) But for free and back, you still have a choice, and I'd like to know if the SDK choice is always (or almost always) a better one.
I am wondering if it is sufficient to conclude that because most of the world's fastest swimmers do this, it necessarily means it's an optimal technique. Dara Torres, for her part, does not use SDK in her sprints. Is this just a case of old dogs having trouble with new tricks? Or could it be that SDKs work great for some--but not so great for other body types?
Thanks very much to everyone for your input. A couple other quirky observations:
with fins on, I actually prefer butterfly kicking--it seems easier and faster than freestyle; with my little inflexible feet, however, the equation seems to shift. If core recruitment/timing is the key, why would artificially larger feet make a difference in fatigue?
kicking dolphin on my back--i.e., backstroke turns and starts--is much easier for me than kicking dolphin on my stomach. I know Ande has mentioned that you should find your best body position for SDKs--back, stomach, or side. Leila Vaziri, 50 m backstroke world record holder, kicks on her side, I am pretty sure. why does body position in the water--face/torso up, sideways, or down--affect fatigue? (My legs get more tired in the 200 backstroke than any other race--most of the kicks here are one legs at a time kicks. Why should freestyle kicking on you back be so much more tiring than freestyle kicking on your stomach? And why dolphin kicks follow the opposite pattern?)
in terms of drag, have there been any plume style studies where SDK and SFK have been measured in the same person? (The swimmer would hold a rope and kick against a measured current, and a strain gauge of some sort could tell which kick created more drag--or something like this. At the ICAR plume for an article once, they had me do something like this with Bermuda shorts and then an Aquablade to measure drag.) Why would two legs acting independently create more drag than two legs together? Is it merely the shared surface area being reduced (in the pressed together thighs, for instance)? I mean intuitively, it seems like a bit less drag, but I am not sure this has been proven
Ande, in terms of your 10.4 for 25 yards, that's amazing. In our Y league up here, we actually have 25s in each event as a race. The fastest times with full swimming, in the 18-29 age groups, are in the 9's and low 10s. Maybe we should add kicking as a new race event?
It seems to be the consensus here that proficiency at SDK will be one of the many sine qua nons of future swimming glory. It would be cool to see what the world's best swimmers are doing in, say, 2208. I wonder what innovations will have occurred by then. I wonder what Johnny Weismuller, in his full body wool suit, would have thought of today's greats?
Thanks very much to everyone for your input. A couple other quirky observations:
with fins on, I actually prefer butterfly kicking--it seems easier and faster than freestyle; with my little inflexible feet, however, the equation seems to shift. If core recruitment/timing is the key, why would artificially larger feet make a difference in fatigue?
kicking dolphin on my back--i.e., backstroke turns and starts--is much easier for me than kicking dolphin on my stomach. I know Ande has mentioned that you should find your best body position for SDKs--back, stomach, or side. Leila Vaziri, 50 m backstroke world record holder, kicks on her side, I am pretty sure. why does body position in the water--face/torso up, sideways, or down--affect fatigue? (My legs get more tired in the 200 backstroke than any other race--most of the kicks here are one legs at a time kicks. Why should freestyle kicking on you back be so much more tiring than freestyle kicking on your stomach? And why dolphin kicks follow the opposite pattern?)
in terms of drag, have there been any plume style studies where SDK and SFK have been measured in the same person? (The swimmer would hold a rope and kick against a measured current, and a strain gauge of some sort could tell which kick created more drag--or something like this. At the ICAR plume for an article once, they had me do something like this with Bermuda shorts and then an Aquablade to measure drag.) Why would two legs acting independently create more drag than two legs together? Is it merely the shared surface area being reduced (in the pressed together thighs, for instance)? I mean intuitively, it seems like a bit less drag, but I am not sure this has been proven
Ande, in terms of your 10.4 for 25 yards, that's amazing. In our Y league up here, we actually have 25s in each event as a race. The fastest times with full swimming, in the 18-29 age groups, are in the 9's and low 10s. Maybe we should add kicking as a new race event?
It seems to be the consensus here that proficiency at SDK will be one of the many sine qua nons of future swimming glory. It would be cool to see what the world's best swimmers are doing in, say, 2208. I wonder what innovations will have occurred by then. I wonder what Johnny Weismuller, in his full body wool suit, would have thought of today's greats?
