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.
Former Member
In backstroke, the head also needs to be flat, looking straight up. Again, a smaller body tube is desirable, and if the head is lifted even a tiny bit, the hips are going to tend downward creating drag across your back.
I tell my swimmers that your face is supposed to get wet in backstroke!
Matt and Gary: thanks. I wonder if you have noticed the backstroker Egerszegi's style. This picture shows her head is tilted with chin down. Some of her video clips also show clearly her head was not flat like other swimmers. It looked like she's surfing on the water quite easily (like a boat)? :rolleyes:
I would add that keeping the head inline with the body is just as important (maybe more important) during the streamline. The tendency when on your front is to lift the head up, just like in swimming.
You are 100% correct about that. It is also interesting to see that in general the farther one can push off the wall before surfacing the faster that person swims. I don't mean dolphin kick off the wall, I mean push and hold.
Sometimes it's hard to take suggestion from text. Your text makes it sound like the head should be laying completely flat and looking straight down. Do you happen to have any links to video illustrating the proper head position as determined by your research? I was always taught head position on crawl was somewhere inbetween laying flat and the water line just above the goggle. Put to practice, the water line is typically at around my hair line while i swim and I'm looking diagonally downward at about 45* in front of me. Is this correct or incorrect? I'd love to think there's just a few things I could fix like head position and gain something significant, but the skeptical part of me thinks it may only be worth a little. Lets say everything else about my stroke is perfect... just how significant could a change to the proper head position be in relation to speed given my current head position? A percent? A few more?
Definately interesting topics. Keep em coming! :)
Matt and Gary: thanks. I wonder if you have noticed the backstroker Egerszegi's style. This picture shows her head is tilted with chin down. Some of her video clips also show clearly her head was not flat like other swimmers. It looked like she's surfing on the water quite easily (like a boat)? :rolleyes:
NHB -
Remember, there are always exceptions in any sport. But I would not "Teach" the head lift shown as it will tend to drive down the hips, again exposing the back to drag.
One interesting thing to see in the picture is that she is not "surfing", as you suggest. (In surfing, you are using a following wave to help with propulsion.) Note the bulge of water that she is "pushing" and thus having to also break through ahead of her head.
Just my opinion.
here's a 'tunnel' with the three different streamlines here. The difference between fiorst and second is not that great. Which makes specific swimmer have bigger or smaller drag cross section can depend on more then just the head position, but the rest of the body position and structure. Key is to tuck the head in wherever one can, to minimize the drag.
Third/bottom streamline, the difference is quite obvious.
I've seen plenty of swimmers thatwill swear up and down "i'm streamlining, I'm streamlining" but when you watch the video, they look a lot more like #3 then #1 or #2.
As for sighting, both of the guys in the picture can see... I think by now everyone can make a guess who is going to slow down more. (bottom guy).
To sight your target, a swimmer doesn't meed nose or mouth out of the water, just eyes. Still breathe on your side. It's a skill that needs some work to fine tune.
Of course, sometimes water can just be too choppy, and you need to lift more.
Two things to learn are: How to lift your head, and keep the body, neck and upper body from lifting up too, and breaking the posture. this can be a bit like learning to juggle ;)
The other is, try to listen/feel the waves, get in the rhythm of sighting when you're on the crest, not in the valley.
Lot of top open water swimmers have sighting worked into their stroke so well, you can barely tell they are doing it. Also, depending on the course, you don't always have to see straight forward to know where you're going, there could be other landmarks, especially if you are swimming along the coast.
Matt and Gary: thanks. I wonder if you have noticed the backstroker Egerszegi's style. This picture shows her head is tilted with chin down. Some of her video clips also show clearly her head was not flat like other swimmers. It looked like she's surfing on the water quite easily (like a boat)? :rolleyes:
I couldn't get the pic link to work, but it isn't hard to find videos of her on YouTube. I also tend to tilt my head (tuck my chin) a bit when I swim. I don't think it HELPS one to float, but the neck is not a rigid rod, either: tucking the chin slightly does not automatically cause a drop in hips. It still isn't something I would teach, but if the person's hips are clearly up (as Egerszegi's were) and the tuck isn't too pronounced then I wouldn't worry too much about it.
here's a 'tunnel' with the three different streamlines here. The difference between fiorst and second is not that great. Which makes specific swimmer have bigger or smaller drag cross section can depend on more then just the head position, but the rest of the body position and structure.
Nice figures, thanks for posting. You would know better than I with your background, but I don't know if cross-sectional area tells the entire story. The change in flow path with the head sticking out more (first figure) seems more abrupt than in the second figure, so I would tend to think the first is not as streamlined as the second. In the 2nd figure, less water is hitting the top of the head because the hands/arms "part" the water so that it flows around the head.
This matches my experience with fins: one time in a 50m pool I did a series of high-speed no-breath "shooters" with fins (typically about 23 sec or so) while adjusting my head position slightly. With my head more forward and arms tighter, I could really feel the water hitting the top of my head. Not so when my head was tucked between my arms. Later on when (without fins) I would take time measurements, I was a little faster with my head between my arms.
Still figures also don't tell the whole story, of course, but the upper part of the body (chest-up) should be pretty rigid and stationary. Movement should be begin below the chest, lead by the hips.
When the head sticks out it acts like a brake. To use the colorful analogies that Gary likes, it is like the difference between kicking with a kickboard held vertically, against the oncoming water, and the kickboard aligned with the body. It's a no-brainer... :)
A former coach of mine (Tommy Hannan) advocated a slight chin tuck in backstroke. His theory is that in backstroke you don't want to be dead flat, but instead want a curvature to the upper back sort of like the bow of a boat. This does make sense to me, but I have a feeling this only works if you also have a good kick to keep your hips up. Tommy himself is a great kicker.
Awesome!
Yes, we have quite a bit of that here at Nadadores too, just not in a form available for public just yet :)
This is you guys, right?
http://www.theraceclub.net/
We're having Dr. Genadijus from http://www.swimetrics.com/ come to Nadadores during out october SCM meet, to work with swimmers.
Sounds like you and Team Termin are doing similar kind of a thing. Very cool!
Too bad you guys aren't closer here to the west coast. When you came to our LCM Nationals in 2005, people loved it.
Dr. G is great. So are Budd Termin in Buffalo and Jan Prins in Hawaii. All have access to the technology to measure velocity at all points in the stroke...essential to understanding the details of stroke mechanics. I am friends with all of them but have no formal relation with any of them.
Gary
