In my own experience, in both free and back (especially backstroke), if my initial 1-2 strokes went wrong (e.g. too slow, or paused, or lost rhythm), then it ruins the whole lap. It seems the inertia from the start determines if the rest of the lap will be successful or not. Can you fully recover from a start that went wrong and still finish a good lap?
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Can you fully recover from a start that went wrong and still finish a good lap?
How can it be possible to FULLY recover from a bad start? If a start loses 1/2 second it would require swimming 1/2 second faster than normal to erase the deficit. If that were possible then you weren't swimming at best effort with a good start.
My point is that this is a silly question.
But that doesn't mean the race is a total loss. Depending on the distance of the event the start is a small portion of the total elapsed time and may not matter much.
In my view 1/2 second (or any other amount of time) can be lost anywhere in a race. Start, turns, finish, and between the walls. So no matter how bad the start a swimmer shouldn't give up and finish out the race the best they can.
Can you fully recover from a start that went wrong and still finish a good lap?
How can it be possible to FULLY recover from a bad start? If a start loses 1/2 second it would require swimming 1/2 second faster than normal to erase the deficit. If that were possible then you weren't swimming at best effort with a good start.
My point is that this is a silly question.
But that doesn't mean the race is a total loss. Depending on the distance of the event the start is a small portion of the total elapsed time and may not matter much.
In my view 1/2 second (or any other amount of time) can be lost anywhere in a race. Start, turns, finish, and between the walls. So no matter how bad the start a swimmer shouldn't give up and finish out the race the best they can.
