Swim Myth #5....Busted.

Myth #5. The reason we pull freestyle underwater with a high elbow is to increase the surface area of our arm. Forgive me. In case you hadn't noticed that I am preaching high elbows a lot, there is a reason. At the end of each camp at the Race Club I always end by prioritizing the 10 or so points that I make to improve speed and efficiency. The top three are 1) High elbow 2) High elbow and 3) High elbow. Dropping the elbow is like taking a drag suit into competition...only worse, because you don't feel or see what is happening to you...until your tongue is hanging out. So when I ask campers and coaches, why the high elbow, I usually get increased power or increased surface area. I don't think either one is right. We all know from throwing on a pair of hand paddles (which, by the way, my coach Flip Darr, reinvented in 1967...Ben Franklin was the first to use, I believe) we get a surge of power from the added surface area. So by creating EVF, do we also increase the surface area of our pulling arm? First, the only area that matters is the part of the arm that ends up creating propulsive drag, which is the hand and forearm, so we can forget about the upper arm for this argument. Now the question is do we have more surface area of the hand/forearm in the EVF position than we do in the deep arm/elbow position? We are really talking about the surface area projected onto a plane perpendicular to our long axis, which is the area creating the propulsive force in the backward direction. In theory, one could argue that a poor swimmer leads so much more with the elbow in the dropped position (the hand/forearm creates a forward angle at the elbow joint) that the surface area is reduced. But with reasonable swimmers that is not what you see. From head on or from the rear, you don't see much difference in the surface area of the forearm/hand regardless of whether it is in the dropped position or the EVF position. The surface area of the arm remains the same. Therefore, I rest my case. The reason we like the EVF position is to reduce drag....and drag remains the #1 enemy of the swimmer. Gary Sr.