Myth #3: The reason one should rotate the body along the long axis in freestyle is to reduce drag.
Please don't tell me this is not a myth. I hear this from beginner coaches all the way to some of America's top swimming coaches. Rotating the body is very important....so is reducing drag. I just don't think we do it for that reason. If we did, kicking on our side would be faster, whether underwater or on the surface, than kicking on our stomach...and there is not much difference in speed either way. Besides that, we really spend very little time on our sides in freestyle. Most of it is in transition from one side to the other and closer to horizontal than vertical. Finishing a freestyle race in a pool on our side is also important...because we can extend our reach further..not reduce drag.
So if body rotation is not about drag reduction, why do we do it? Two reasons. The first is to gain more power. By rotating, we put our arm into a mechanically better position of strength, engaging much bigger muscles in our back and core to help with the pulling. The second reason has to do with the counter-rotation. When we enter our right hand in the water, for example, our body is rotating to the left. At the very moment we begin our catch, the body has stopped rotating left and initiates the counter-rotation back to the right. We call this point the connection (between arm and core/hips). This counter rotation creates a stabilizing force that gives us something to pull against. Remember, it is you and the water molecules out there...no walls, starting blocks or pitching mounds to push off or pull against. So we create our own stabilizing force out of the rotational motion of our own body. The faster and longer the counter-rotational turn, the greater the stabilizing force and the better distance per stroke (dps) we can achieve. This is one advantage the hip/leg driven swimmers have over the high stroke rate swimmers...holding in front longer gives them more time to rotate/counter-rotate the hips. But before you all go rushing back to that technique, if you don't have the legs driving you, even that extra dps cannot overcome the inertia problem. You are still swimming 'stop-and-go' freestyle..not as efficient as the high stroke rate.
Most swimmers I teach swim very flat...like a surfboard that grew arms and legs. That would be ok if we had the buoyancy and drag coefficient of a surfboard, but we don't. We are bricks and to move a brick through the water, we need the added power that the body rotation gives us. BTW, this is why wetsuits enable one to get away with swimming flatter.
Can you use good body rotation with a high stroke rate? Yes...but it takes work. The body rotation doesn't just happen. You make it happen...but because there is less time, it becomes more oriented from the shoulder and less from the hip which takes longer to turn (although hip motion is still important). Thus the name shoulder-driven freestyle.
Gary Sr.
Former Member
Gary - I love your threads. I've read them all on other boards. The more I learn about swimming the more I relate to all of your advice.
I must say that for me what sticks out about #3 is how strong kickers get the advantage of being able to rotate more/reach more and get the longer dps. My coach is having me try to increase my dps but I haven't yet developed the kick to properly be able to do this. It is coming along though.
Anyways... love the posts. Thanks!
Correct. Fly generates the fastest speed (momentarily) of all strokes (well over 3 m/sec in world class swimmers)....but also shares with breaststroke the dubious honor of having 70 to 80% or higher reduction of speed during the same stroke cycle, by virtue of having both arms creating frontal drag at the same time. In breaststroke, you can thank those great big thighs coming forward that nearly brings each breaststroker to a halt with each stroke cycle. Fly and breaststroke are both inefficient, 'stop-and-go' strokes, with a total disregard for the importance of inertia.
Gary
Ah, so that could be why my one armed fly drill, with alternating arms is faster then my actual fly. No "stop" part in the cycle to, well, stop me, and I don't poop out as quickly.
This got me thinking of something that's a bit of a digression....
I've heard some people say taht butterfly (also, the style with the front quadrant focus) is actually the fastest stroke around.
I wonder if anyone has tried doing butterfly with a flipturn, vs. a freestyle flipturn race... on a 100Y or 100m or maybe 200 distance, and how the times compared.
To further the digression...There was a relay meet in college we used to attend that the stroke relays allowed flipturns at every wall (300 butterfly relay, 300 br relay, 400IM relay etc). I don't particularily remember it being much faster, but it was also a very early meet in the season, so it's hard to compare given the yardage we were doing at the time.
Back to topic though, it's hard to say this myth is totally busted if we should still be doing what it says to do, just for other reasons. More of an asterisk to the original or clarification?
Please don't tell me this is not a myth. Certainly is.
So if body rotation is not about drag reduction, why do we do it? Two reasons. The first is to gain more power. By rotating, we put our arm into a mechanically better position of strength, engaging much bigger muscles in our back and core to help with the pulling. Sorry to be on your tail, I do respect your experience and position in the world of swimming.
But that's a great opportunity to better illustrate my thoughts related to your first myth busting post.
Yes indeed body rotation adds some pulling power. The analogy I often use, it's like cranking a reluctant gas fueled lawn mower. You'd do it twisting your torso to add more power to the motion. **Upward** body rotation adds some power, thus allowing higher peaks velocity to take place. But given that you don't extend the hand entry/catch phase, your hand will already be near the end of FQ when that occurs.
Or well, a more general and inclusive statement would be: You want your hand to be where it's safe for you to apply massive load of torque when the body rotates upward. For me, given my fragile shoulders, I need to time my arm cycle in a way that I am already near the end of Front-Quadrant when that occurs (upper body rotation). That explains why I feel that I get my peak pulling propulsion only then, not before. Not while the body rotates downward in other words.
This got me thinking of something that's a bit of a digression....
I've heard some people say taht butterfly (also, the style with the front quadrant focus) is actually the fastest stroke around.
I wonder if anyone has tried doing butterfly with a flipturn, vs. a freestyle flipturn race... on a 100Y or 100m or maybe 200 distance, and how the times compared.
WR in the 50M free is about 1.2 seconds faster than 50M fly for both men and women.
This has everything to do with drag, but unfortunately, with the mechanics of fly and breaststroke, one cannot prevent the extreme changes in velocity. Even Kitojima comes to almost a complete stop with each kick when his thighs move forward, regardless of how short of time they are there. Therefore, fly and *** do not obey the laws of inertia. The are simply not efficient strokes.
Gary Sr.
Unfortunately, the fly and *** strokes obey the laws of inertia even we wish it were not so! They are just less efficient than freestyle.
I keep thinking that in freestyle there should be less drag in a side position than in a front position when you're on the surface of the water. Sufficiently far from a boundary, orientation of your body relative to gravity should not have any influence. If you're on the surface, you'll interact with the boundary and create a wake. The energy in the surface waves making up the wake has to come from somewhere, so it must come from your efforts at locomotion being wasted. I'd maintain that you'll interact less with the surface on your side. I'd agree completely that it is not the biggest reason to rotate.
Having your body oriented on its side should reduce drag, at least it feels that way for me. But you can't swim completely on your side, you've got to pull, and the way to put the most propulsion to the water is to rotate your body from one side to the other as you're pulling your hand by your hip, as you described so well. In this case, bio-mechanics trump fluid mechanics.
I know the statement is hyperbole,but you can't have "total disregard for the importance of inertia" in BR.Given the high drag points in BR it is if anything more important to minimize all extraneous drag.To that end the"great big thighs"should not come forward until after the recovery at the catch and then only as much as necessary to maximize leg thrust(not 90 degrees like in the old flat BR).Until then the feet should recover by bending the knees only.
This has everything to do with drag, but unfortunately, with the mechanics of fly and breaststroke, one cannot prevent the extreme changes in velocity. Even Kitojima comes to almost a complete stop with each kick when his thighs move forward, regardless of how short of time they are there. Therefore, fly and *** do not obey the laws of inertia. The are simply not efficient strokes.
Gary Sr.
Therefore, fly and *** do not obey the laws of inertia. The are simply not efficient strokes. Gary Sr.
Gary, sorry to only agree with you on 50% of this statement...I would personally change it to "fly is the beautiful stroke and all of you ugly, inefficient breaststrokers need to go back to gymnastics or diving"
Hmmmm not sure.... But I'd like to let you explain me how?
Why would the human body floats better (thus requiring more volume of body to be out in the air) on his side than flat belly?
Counsilman found it long ago that passive drag was greater when swimmers were towed on their side than when in prone position. That was very long ago, but the test didn't involve swimming technique. Just a human body being towed.
And it kind of makes sense too. Can't explain my thoughts, way too challenging for my limited English. Bah lets try... Considering the body as a vessel. Fairly flat one (more wide than thick). Considering that being in prone position is horizontal. But if you don't catch immediately, that just won't happen. Hard to imagine why this vessel would float better in a vertical position compared to horizontal. Although you may be right and Councilman wrong, hence why I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
One thing though that this study did not account for. If some of the energy used in pulling is used to lift yourself during the process of rotating from left to right, then it's possible that this would end up exposing less body volume in the water. But on the other hand, drag probably gets created during this process as well so let's assume it cancels off. Otherwise it could go one way or the other. In other words, there's a possibility that the net effect of body rotation be to create more drag than saving some.
I totally agree with your position on inertia being involved in BS and Fly. In fact, I wrote a full reply but then read yours, so I held on.
I was basing my conjecture on wake drag and interaction with the surface. I've been trying to figure out how to kick the fastest off the turn (for me, anyway) and I've tried different orientations, but my times to 10 meters don't seem to vary if I kick on my front, side or back as long as I'm deep enough. Kicking on the surface is slower for me no matter what orientation I use, so as long as I'm deep enough (about 3/4 meter to 1 meter) I can carry speed off my turn and get out.
With depth, you don't create surface waves. If you're on the surface you will, no matter what, it is just a matter of how much. Drag from the surface waves may be small compared to form drag from the water you need to push out of the way to move through. I think the skin friction is minimal, most of the drag is form drag and wake drag.
But this is a complex problem, not clean like a ship being pushed through the water. You're not driven by a propeller from the back (though some people have tremendous kicking power and it seems that they just motor away when you swim against them), and so it is not just drag reduction that lets you go faster. Rotation is key to getting your arms around and into a position that provides the best propulsion. If you can minimize the drag at the same time, so much the better.
OK, so I waffled -- let me continue do do so: If you're just being dragged through the water in a streamlined position on the surface, the form drag will be less when you're on your front, but the wake drag will be higher. On your side, the form drag and skin friction will be slightly higher (because there is more of you in the water), but the wake drag will be lower because there is less of you on the surface. Because the form drag is the biggest, the overall drag will be less when you're passive and on your front.
When you're actually trying to propel yourself and kicking, the wake drag goes up and becomes more important. So I'd think that for a swimmer actively propelling themselves, the drag would be less on the side. It would depend on the type of propulsion, dolphin kick produces a lot of waves, flutter kick no so much. So I'd maintain dolphin kick would be faster on your side or underwater, flutter kick might not matter. That seems consistent with what I've tried in my own practice.
For freestyle, I can't get anywhere in terms of dps without rotating. The drag in this case is of secondary importance, without rotation I can't get any power to the water.
