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.
I don't believe that the ability to clear water from your hands is some sort of mystical ability that you are born with or not. If your hands enter in the same way and follow the same path the effect on bubbles will be the same. It may take a swimmer with good proprioception to figure out how to do it but once that is done I don't see a scientific reason why that technique can't be imitated by others.
It is somewhat "un-American" to believe that hard work can't overcome or equal innate talent, so Gary's comment also struck a wrong cord with me.
And yet...
Anyone who has spent time with beginner and age-group swimmers knows what he is talking about. Call it natural "feel" for the water or whatever you want, there are certainly some people who have the knack.
I am less sure exactly what constitutes this innate feel. I certainly wouldn't have said "clearing bubbles," though maybe that's a part of it. I guess I would have said it is better than usual proprioception (nice word, Lindsay) coupled with paying more attention to subtle feedbacks between body & water that many people ignore.
Can someone without this knack overcome the lack? I don't know the answer to that. What Lindsay says seems reasonable and I would like to believe it ("hard work trumps talent!"). But I wonder if there are not just so many variables that someone without the gift will always fall a little behind. It is like the cook who always faithfully follows all the steps in a cookbook and prepares perfectly nice dishes, compared to the master chef who instinctively knows what will work (and often ignores the cookbook, or at least improvises on it).
I don't believe that the ability to clear water from your hands is some sort of mystical ability that you are born with or not. If your hands enter in the same way and follow the same path the effect on bubbles will be the same. It may take a swimmer with good proprioception to figure out how to do it but once that is done I don't see a scientific reason why that technique can't be imitated by others.
It is somewhat "un-American" to believe that hard work can't overcome or equal innate talent, so Gary's comment also struck a wrong cord with me.
And yet...
Anyone who has spent time with beginner and age-group swimmers knows what he is talking about. Call it natural "feel" for the water or whatever you want, there are certainly some people who have the knack.
I am less sure exactly what constitutes this innate feel. I certainly wouldn't have said "clearing bubbles," though maybe that's a part of it. I guess I would have said it is better than usual proprioception (nice word, Lindsay) coupled with paying more attention to subtle feedbacks between body & water that many people ignore.
Can someone without this knack overcome the lack? I don't know the answer to that. What Lindsay says seems reasonable and I would like to believe it ("hard work trumps talent!"). But I wonder if there are not just so many variables that someone without the gift will always fall a little behind. It is like the cook who always faithfully follows all the steps in a cookbook and prepares perfectly nice dishes, compared to the master chef who instinctively knows what will work (and often ignores the cookbook, or at least improvises on it).
