Swim Smooth: What Is An Efficient Freestyle Stroke? Part 2

http://www.swimsmooth.com Swimming experts Swim Smooth examine what is an efficient freestyle stroke and the implications for your own swimming. Features new footage of Olympian Jono Van Hazel and top age group triathlete Sally Scaffidi.

Find out much more about how to improve your swimming at: www.swimsmooth.com

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• swimming
• stroke
• technique
• freestyle
• efficient
• front
• crawl

[BongoTheElf]

Some v.interesting points. Having spent 4 years reducing my SR from 28 to 16 strokes per 25m length - I now find I can't swim anywhere near as fast as before!! I do have a nice elegant stroke though - and for the 50+ age group perhaps thats more important than speed.

[stumurr]

Superb, nothing close to this online

[richardlanejordan]

@upndown68 My argument shows there are 2 different factors that comprise speed: (1) technical efficiency and (2) fitness. My main problem with the video was it did not properly address the fitness factor. Holding Janet Evans up as a model of efficiency to further an argument for short strokes is not convincing because it is not fair to assume she was like "every other gal in the pool" in terms of fitness. I argue she trained harder, swam longer, and was mentally stronger so won.

[richardlanejordan]

@RonixCorp You have the references to @swimsmooth and me opposite.

[upndown68]

@richardlanejordan While Janet was incredibly fit, so was every other gal in the pool. This isn't a he said she said argument, it's been proven repeatedly with science. I don't care how you slice it Richard, efficiency or lack of is the biggest limiter in the water. The the USOTC in Colorado Springs didn't pay to have hydrodynamic studies of water velocity done on and around swimmers bodies so they could tell them to swim an extra 5K every day to get faster.

[maribk]

Wow! 

[RonixCorp]

i agree that Efficiency and speed are different things. in a race the fastest wins. you don't get any medals for being efficient. if i swim 50 meters as fast as i can i will do a good time but i may be dead tired when i'm done. is that efficient? obviously not because if it were efficient i would be able to swim another 2 km, but i'm not. so probably efficiency is a measure of how 1) fast you swam and 2) how tired you are when you finished the swim. and you can't confuse the first with both.

[richardlanejordan]

A question: Was Phelps dominant in Bejing because of his technical efficiency or his incredible fitness and natural physical gifts? I.e. was he more likely the most efficient swimmer in the world or fittest?

[richardlanejordan]

@swimsmooth I agree there is a threshold that your technique must meet, and Janet clearly passes that. I strongly disagree with your insinuation that just because a swimmer like Janet is fast she is a model of efficiency. If I train 10k meters a day and you 8k while your stroke is perfect and mine some efficiency threshold, I will out race you. The swimmer who wins the race is usually not the most efficent but the most fit.

[hazey55]

@captdavidwebb There should be an element of glide but not too much. It's a fine line. Start the catch when your lead arm is at full extention. When you overglide, you are decelerating due to the denseness of water. This means you need to accelerate back up to speed with every stroke. Repeatedly slowing down then speeding up is simply inefficient. Try going out for a run and keep speeding up and slowing down every couple of seconds. Or go for a run and take exageratedly long steps.