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.
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.
This is so true. When I am fresh I can execute this EVF quite well. The problem I have is holding it in longer swims of 500yds or longer. When I get fatigued, it is real hard to hold this EVF stroke together.
It is remarkably faster than a dropped elbow. A dropped elbow is truly the kiss of death for a distance swimmer.
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.
Do any competition pools lack the black line?
Fortunately, where I swim I almost always have my own lane. It's a legit pool and I did discover tonight that this pool does in fact have the black line. I can't believe I never even noticed. I guess the change of pace of the quicker turnarounds never caused an issue. I have never even wanted to consider swimming the 1650 in a 25 yard pool, but the black line has driven me to madness both times now that I have done the 1500 LCM.
Besides consiously trying to keep my head down, are there any drills or aperatus I can use to force me to keep my head down?
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.
I've been thinkiNG about this a bit, and came up with my own little personal theory... Not sure if this is correct, but on the surface it seems to make sense....
I've been watching some of our national team swimmers, and other top level people video, and watching my 22 yr old stepdaughter swim, who is a NCAA all american (I forget what division and where and how many times, hubby keep track, enough to get her a nice college scholaship, and swims faster then most of us can ever hope to, so decently accomplished)... and I talked it over with my hubby, who is a level 5 masters coach (blah blah blah)
She too is a little very flexible gumby who can hang her elbows way behind her ears, and I think the following may be happening:
Some people may have sifficiently flexible phisique that tilting the head down some allows them to squeeze their shoulders and upper arms even closer together, and whatever they lose by sticking their head down lower, they may gain that, and even more by making their overall frontal cross section smaller. Especially people who can really hyperextend their shoulders and other joints, and otherwise have wide shoulders. See attached pic.
I think this is what may be happening, but I'm not sure, I'm going to have to impose a series of 'torture' tests on our swimmers to see how it works in action :P Good thing stepdaughter just graduated college is and is home for the summer, I need to grab a tapemeasure, and have her do a few streamline positions, she how much she can suck in her shoulder circumference.
The bottom line is, that whatever little thing one can do to increase the efficinecy "In their personal case and physique" is what works the best. I think best coaches tend to help swimmers figure out how to take best advantage out of what they do have (and develop it further), rather then pishing one size fits all solution.... once we get past the basics.
Besides consiously trying to keep my head down, are there any drills or aperatus I can use to force me to keep my head down?
Snorkel. I use this one; my teammate uses this one.
Without the snorkel, you should see under the water, not over it, when you breathe. When I first got that tip I thought it was crazy but it's not.
Fortunately, where I swim I almost always have my own lane. It's a legit pool and I did discover tonight that this pool does in fact have the black line. I can't believe I never even noticed. I guess the change of pace of the quicker turnarounds never caused an issue. I have never even wanted to consider swimming the 1650 in a 25 yard pool, but the black line has driven me to madness both times now that I have done the 1500 LCM.
Besides consiously trying to keep my head down, are there any drills or aperatus I can use to force me to keep my head down?
The snorkel by Finis is good, but so is the head down sculling drill. You can see that one on our DVD, Fundamentals of Fast Swimming, available on our website, www.theraceclub.com.
Gary
Nice clip YouTube- Chris Stevenson 200 Back SCM Masters WR as a confirmation! :D
AWESOME! Congratulations, Chris, for all you have achieved! And, thanks for the clip! :applaud:
