Myth #2: Aside from shaving, wearing a cap and a high tech suit or wetsuit, the only way to reduce drag is by streamlining off the start and turns.
Of the 3 fundamental laws that govern swimming technique, drag, motion and inertia, drag is by far the most important. Drag is the number one enemy of the swimmer...something we learned 250 world records after changing suit fabric from lycra to polyurethane. What most swimmers fail to realize is that there are three common mistakes made by far too many swimmers that add significant drag to their swim (more than the suits reduced) and they make them through every stroke cycle...over and over again. The first is head position. Most swimmers hold their head position way too high, looking forward. I call it defensive swimming, because after getting smacked in the head by someone veering over into your side of the lane, you will start to swim like Tarzan. Problem is lifting the head causes the hips to sink and the surface (wave) drag on your head to increase. Swimming through the water like a hammock, or if you have no legs, at an angle of 5 to 10 degrees from head to toe, creates a huge increase in drag.
If you have your head in alignment with your body, you should be looking down and you haven't a clue where you are going. So if you are swimming in open water, don't swim for 200 strokes out in the lake or ocean without looking up (briefly) and charting your course...or you may be swimming faster, but out to sea. Otherwise, lead the lane, go ten seconds behind, stay way to the right and pray a lot….but keep your head down.
Second is the underwater arm position. Keep your elbows high (also called early vertical forearm) as this position of the arm as you pull through the water reduces the frontal drag significantly over pulling with the arm deep with a dropped elbow. Holding this high elbow position, particularly during a breath or with good body rotation, is challenging and requires good extension (negative angle) of the shoulder. Finally, if you insist on kicking hard, do so with tight narrow kicks. The act of bending the knee too much to get that big forceful kick increases the drag way more than the benefit of the extra power.
Gary Sr.
Is there an angle that you can still be looking ahead and yet be in perfect alignment?
I do not think so. I think that if you want to race freestyle as fast as you can, you need to let go of being able to see where you are going, and rely on the black line and T and maybe also on stroke-counting. If you need to look around in practice because of the conditions, that's a shame, because getting your head down will speed you up; and I know from bitter experience that it takes a lot of practice to break the looking-ahead habit.
As an aside, do most competition pools have the black line?
Do any competition pools lack the black line?
Is there an angle that you can still be looking ahead and yet be in perfect alignment?
I do not think so. I think that if you want to race freestyle as fast as you can, you need to let go of being able to see where you are going, and rely on the black line and T and maybe also on stroke-counting. If you need to look around in practice because of the conditions, that's a shame, because getting your head down will speed you up; and I know from bitter experience that it takes a lot of practice to break the looking-ahead habit.
As an aside, do most competition pools have the black line?
Do any competition pools lack the black line?
