It isn't a new rule, it is just a "reinterpretation" of an existing rule! Got it.
(They just keep trying to make breaststroke faster...shades of Pinocchio, maybe it will be a real stroke someday...)
This is the best news I've heard all day! Hopefully USMS will adopt the same interpretation. Nobody has called me on it yet, but I certainly want to be free to do my dolphin kick at the initiation of my pulldown rather than at the end given that the Olympians were doing it (and given that doing it at the end was always awkward for me).
I admit that the dolphin kick is a bit of a pandora's box and a slippery slope. I really do hope they prohibit further encroachments on the "purity" of the underwater pullout. For example, I really hope the prohibit dolphin kicks at the beginning and end of the pulldown, though I do fear that's where we're going next. In fact, I'm not sure how to stop that one.
IF they call it this way consistently it may be OK.My worry is that people will do the early kick and then add the second during the pull and argue that it wasn't really a kick,just natural undulation-exactly the problem the 2005 rule was trying to solve.Instead of going down this slippery slope I'd rather they eliminated the pullout entirely and said we could swim regular BR underwater for 15M.
Yeah, they opened pandora's box when they allowed the dolphin kick in the first place, and now they're making it worse...
So basically, we can go from arms in tight pencil streamline to arms in superman superman and do the dolphin kick while still in a "streamline" position. That movement of the hands from pencil position to superman qualifies as the lateral movement. I hope Brendan Hansen gets himself on a rules committee at some point in the (near) future and restores his stroke to normalcy.
This is confusing but, to me anyway, isn't this a tightening up of the rule such that any arm movement in any direction is considered the initiation of the pull?
This is confusing but, to me anyway, isn't this a tightening up of the rule such that any arm movement in any direction is considered the initiation of the pull?
Yes, jokes aside, I think it is an attempt to be consistent.
Peg, you hands don't need to be nearly as separated as in the "superman" position. One of coaches was talking about it this morning, they were thinking that a slight movement out from full streamline -- even just turning your hands outward in preparation of the pull (a slight "lateral movement") -- would be sufficient for the pull to be considered initiated.
So I don't know if the new interpretation will make things easier or not. It is hard to see the slightest movement, so in effect it may well be that this interpretation just allows one to kick before the pull.
I'm not a breaststroker (if that's news to anybody). I know Kitajima does the kick first but it is hard to see that it would be faster than doing it during the pull itself, when it feels more natural. What do the real breaststrokers here think?
Plus -- maybe I'm mistaken on this -- I thought the intent of the original rule to allow dolphin kicks (ie, Kitajima v 1.0) was because there was a natural tendency to move the hips a little in the pullout and it could be hard to distinguish between that and a full-blown (intentional) dolphin kick. If that's the case, now one might be able to get away with two dolphin kicks during the pull-down: one before the pull and one during it. I bet Kitajima will do that in London.
Maybe in 10 years there will just be a 15m rule like in the other strokes; anything goes until that point.
I think they needed this interpretation because lots of breaststrokers were doing their dolphin before what many of us would be considered the start of the pull. Now at least it's clear what constitues the start of the pull.
Also, Bruce Stratton has the most illegible signature I've ever seen!
my understanding of the original rule was
you do the dolphin kick where kitajima did in the 2004 olympics
as you were completing your underwater pull down with your hands by your side
you accomplish the single downward kick by changing angles
when you watch hansen do it
he took the dolphin kick before he did his pull down
I believe kitajima switched to doing the dolphin kick before
for breastroke
I wish we could do whatever we wanted underwater for 15 meters of each length
When I first attempted to put the dolphin kick into my pullout, but BEFORE reading the rule, I found that kicking before the initiation of the arm pull seemed to be the most natural. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that I once swam a training session with Kosuke (i.e., maybe it's infectious)?
