Sunday, November 05, 2006
Accelerating and Thin
I took a swim clinic recently and I'll discuss some of the things that I learned over the next few weeks.
There are two things that can make a swimmer go faster.
1) Create less resistance to forward movement
2) Create greater power
Tonight at practice I talked about 2 ideas which are "thin" and "acceleration".
Acceleration - the rate of the change in speed. Suppose I don't change the speed of my pull from the start of the stroke until the finish of the stroke, then there is no acceleration. Acceleration means that the pull gets faster from the starting position until the end of the pull. The faster the acceleration, the stronger the force that is created. Good swimmers start their pull slowly and ACCELRATE to the end of the pull and the change in speed is very significant.
Thin - The bigger the cross section of your body in the water the more drag it will create. Therefore you are trying to keep your body as "thin" as possible. You do this in the streamline position. Arms extended above your head with your hands one on top of the other with you ears IN FRONT of your arms. By sticking your arms behind your head, your shoulders blades will come closer together and make a "thinner" body. Note I've had some coaches say that they don't think this is more streamline because the head sticks out below the body. I'm not sure, but something to try is to see how far you can push off from the wall with various streamlines. Try it with you ears between your arms and then with your ears behind your arms and see how far you will go.
There are two things that can make a swimmer go faster.
1) Create less resistance to forward movement
2) Create greater power
Tonight at practice I talked about 2 ideas which are "thin" and "acceleration".
Acceleration - the rate of the change in speed. Suppose I don't change the speed of my pull from the start of the stroke until the finish of the stroke, then there is no acceleration. Acceleration means that the pull gets faster from the starting position until the end of the pull. The faster the acceleration, the stronger the force that is created. Good swimmers start their pull slowly and ACCELRATE to the end of the pull and the change in speed is very significant.
Thin - The bigger the cross section of your body in the water the more drag it will create. Therefore you are trying to keep your body as "thin" as possible. You do this in the streamline position. Arms extended above your head with your hands one on top of the other with you ears IN FRONT of your arms. By sticking your arms behind your head, your shoulders blades will come closer together and make a "thinner" body. Note I've had some coaches say that they don't think this is more streamline because the head sticks out below the body. I'm not sure, but something to try is to see how far you can push off from the wall with various streamlines. Try it with you ears between your arms and then with your ears behind your arms and see how far you will go.
# posted by gladorca's blog @ 8:34 PM 
