Myth #6: In order to reduce the air bubbles behind your hand underwater, you must enter the hand delicately.
Many beginner swimmers are taught to enter the hand into the water just in front of their head and slide it underwater forward as the elbow extends. Or some are told to slow the hand down before it enters the water, kind of like one of those new toilet seats with the spring shock absorber on it. The reasons, I can only assume, are to try to reduce the number of air bubbles one gets when the hand pulls through the water.
Having a lot of air bubbles behind the hand reduces the amount of propulsive drag one can generate as the hand moves backward in the propulsive phase of the pull. And, if you haven't already noticed, most of the great swimmers have little or no air and the not-so-great swimmers often have lots of air. Why?
Well, it doesn't have to do with laying the hand in slowly or sliding it out from the head forward, because none of the great swimmers do that. In fact, quite the opposite, they move the arms/hands aggressively and quickly forward through the recovery, hurrying to get them back into the water again.
So how do they manage to get rid of the air? Good question. My old coach, Doc Counsilman at Indiana U., used to evaluate swimming talent by how much air he saw on the hand underwater. Proprioception is what he thought made the difference. Great swimmers could sense where to find and hold water....that includes getting rid of the air.
Many swimmers enter with the thumb down and roll the hand (externally rotate the shoulder) to accomplish this. Others spread or move the fingers slightly. And of course the small amount of movement of the hand in the saggital plane as the hand goes through the underwater cycle also helps.
Bottom line, as much as I hate to say it, is that one is mostly born with this ability. Just don't try to get it by being delicate with your hand or slowing your stroke cycle, because that just leads to creating more problems than it helps.
Even great swimmers have some air bubbles. Just accept what you have and move on to the things you can control.
Gary Sr.
The pressure in an air bubble is exactly the same as in the surrounding water.
Lindsay,
That may be true, but aerated water is much less dense than non-aerated water. This is the principle behind diving sparge systems that ensure divers won't be hurt if they land flat while trying something new. Without knowing the science, swimming certainly feels faster when your hands/forearms establish a solid purchase on dense water rather than pulling through bubbles.
Rich
The pressure in an air bubble is exactly the same as in the surrounding water.
Lindsay,
That may be true, but aerated water is much less dense than non-aerated water. This is the principle behind diving sparge systems that ensure divers won't be hurt if they land flat while trying something new. Without knowing the science, swimming certainly feels faster when your hands/forearms establish a solid purchase on dense water rather than pulling through bubbles.
Rich
