Sports Science Topic - June 2, 2009

Cos Its gives you more power to move forward but only if someone who was brutal strength with high speed muscle fibre or very flexible fella like Sullivan. I have tried it - its faster but worn out quicker than traditional stroke

I have been playing around with this for one of my kids and it seems to be working. This is a girl that is a fairly fast swimmer, and despite having a decent time in the 50 free (and winning it at the 12 and Under State Meet last season), she didn't seem to have the stroke rate that would allow her to continue to progress in that event.

She is now attempting to recover the straight arm higher rather than wide, in order to drive the hips a bit more, and to bring gravity and momentum into the arm recovery. It is tiring, and she is struggling to hold it for an entire long course 50. This past weekend, she was able to hold it most of the way but had a couple of weird breaths at the end. It seems to be harder to try to find where to fit the breath in. She switched into it at the end of her 100 free and it helped her finish strong. When she uses it, she seems to blaze down the pool. She's dropped from 30.5 to 29.2 (LCM) this season. So far, I like it. I wouldn't necessarily use it for everyone though.

It would be interesting to have a drill in Goswim related to that !
A video that shows the difference between traditional and straight arm recovery, mixes them, and makes us feel like Phelps...

I think he's bored and wanted to play with something new. Who knows if it will work. Every time Michael says he's going to try to do something, I keep thinking in the back of my head... HE CAN'T DO THAT... then he does it. I'm done questioning his swimming, I just watch.

I have tried some of my freestyle test sets with it and the first thing I noticed when I really got a "rhythm" going was my lats were burning, it is a set of 8x50 @ 3:00 max power each repeat. I'm gonna have to go with the connection of "angular momentum" from the recovering arm. Since the hand is much farther away from the body it is going to create more angular momentum than having the forearm and hand close to the body as it recovers.

Obviously entering the arm more straight will result in some lift of the body creating less frontal resistance, but the disturbance on the surface probably about negates that effect. So it makes sense that straight arm freestylers still knife the entry for the most part.

Phelps or Bowman was saying something about it helping slow his turnover down or something. In order to get the angular momentum it would probably be at midpull thorugh the push and the recovering arm would be going from up in the air into a deep catch and the shoulders would have to be rigid for the momentum to be conserved through to the pushing arm. The reaching and pushing angular momentum would also be present so it would potentially add power to the push phase I would imagine.

Either way using different muscles at the end of a race that are not saturated in H+ ions has to be beneficial if it is still efficient in some way. That idea has been toyed with using the dolphin kick freestyle at the end to probably use less saturated muscle in the legs to finish with more power output. That is about all my thoughts on it. Maybe I have more, but I'm pressed for time at the moment.

I agree with Dave that this is most definitely not a sprint only stroke. I use it sometimes when I'm tired in those long anaerobic/aerobic hard sets.

Maybe people do not believe it would be ideal for distance since more small muscles would be involved, but more small muscles being used has it's advantages over one-two large muscles apparently. Obviously the body can be trained to filter those smaller muscles quick enough! We have to remember how SKINNY Janet Evans was though. Looking at her from a front view she had very little frontal resistance. Especially since she used one arm when it entered to help lift her body up higher out of the water, note her weird breath. I would bet if they could record her velocity back then she would have a spike in her velocity while she was finishing the push phase with angular momentum of one arm and using the other to lift her body out...

"Even if you look at Fred Bousquet's stroke, his arms aren't completely straight on the recovery, but he hooks in and grabs water so fast because of the angle his hand enters the water." - how I do that Dave? I am interesting to try his freestyle stroke to see what it is like.

Listen Billy, Janet Evans is one of rare breed distance swimmer - its not easy someone to try copy her style to swim those long distances

What can I say? I think I nailed it on the head:

http://www.floswimming.org/videos/coverage...

There have been some great comments in relation to this topic and as always Billy comes up with some great video’s to augment thoughts. I didn't know that double D was even aware that distance swimmers existed... must be a better student than I thought.

On a funny aside to those of you who might not know this, but Barbara Evans (mom)was training Janet at lunch time most days of the week. All training was based off the concept of well this was your time on this set last time, so go faster this time. As I understand it, Bud didn’t find out until very late in the game prior to Seoul.
Anyway, one of the keys that haven’t been mentioned so far is the fact that connecting the “windmill” stroke into the body is an absolute must. Billy talked about angular momentum, but that’s all for naught unless the whole stroke is driven through the core and hip rotation. So yes it has the potential to be more powerful, has the potential to increase rate along with that power, but connecting the anchor to the core has to happen to make this work.
If you watch his 100 meter race in Charlotte you’ll note that he swam his regular stroke in the beginning, a little straight arm in the 2nd 25 and then evolved into his normal stroke through the turn. Coming off the wall it was all the old MP we’ve seen, and then back to the windmill to finish the race. In watching it seemed that his ability to manage the stroke was limited, and there seemed to be a clear lack of connection between the “windmill” and the body… especially over the last 15 meters. To me the lack on connection seemed stronger on the left than the right.
http://swimnetwork.com/videos/v/20090517/c...
What makes the left side seem like a struggle is the fact that MP uses a hybrid based stroke that is used by many, but might make the transition difficult. ( He gallops) By this I mean that on his left side he uses a high elbow anchor, but on the right side he uses more of a straight arm (underwater stroke). This causes him to surge off the right side, (more power) and then drop down lower in the water and be more horizontal on the left side. So where the right arm will fit well with the transition to a straight arm recovery, the left will struggle with it.
In this race I thought the transition to the windmill did nothing for him at all, and he looked far more powerful in his normal stroke, that might be just a training/adaptation issue, and time will answer that question (is it right), but underneath all that it’s not easy fitting this stroke onto a hybrid/gallop stroke to begin with, and as I’ve talked about on this site. Getting the brain clued into how to manage this in an effective manner won’t be an easy task.
It’s an interesting strategy since there are so many variables to consider. Do his genetics allow him to make this leap? (sprints) There have been many distance based swimmers who dropped down, Ryk Neethling being the most recent example, but under the current suit conditions, the ability of the distance based swimmer to compete at the 100 level is very limited. When the 50 back, breast and fly folks figure this out, things might change in those events as well. However, a large part of this depends on what FINA does with the suits, and what direction they take. With Mustapha stepping down and Maglione coming in, it might shift the mindset back to a pre 2007 level, and that will give Michael a chance. Keep things as they are, and I think it will be tough.