Wave Drag caused by the entry of the arm and lateral movements to the side because of a unstabilized torso moving sideways can be costing you more energy than you thought!
Let us first recall the definition of success in swimming or what is efficient swimming:
It is to move through the water with the minimal amount of energy required for a particular effort.
Timing of your swim is but just a quantifiable aspect of this beautiful skill. The actual success we're looking for is in the efficiency of the performance of the art of swimming.
Visualize this:
Two persons (Swimmer A and B) swimming side by side at the same speed. Are they expending the same amount of energy to get the same result?
Let's put aside the weight, height, palm size, strength and every other physiological aspect and just focus on the technique aspect of this little comparison.
A smash his hand into the water at entry everytime then extends his arm and shoulder underwater very quickly in an attempt to stretch as far out and as fast as possible.
B makes his hand entry as effortless as possible and extend his arm and shoulder underwater quickly but still conscious in not putting any effort to push the water frontward.
Judging from these two circumstances, A would definitely be expending more energy than B to swim at the same speed.
3 reasons:
i) A is not able to do a clean entry and thus his catch will not be productive and so his pull will be affected too with the large amount of bubbles(air) that he brought into the catch with the smashing entry.
And because of the inefficient catch, he will have to push back much harder to get the same result.
ii) A'll also have to do more strokes to catch up because the push phase he'll do will not be as efficient in propelling him than B's push will.
iii) Third and the most important factor is the wave drag Swimmer A will be getting from the strong extension of arm and shoulder under the water after entry.
As the extension of the arm and shoulder is done frontward, it is actually pushing against the water in the direction where he's moving.
His strong extension will cause a lot of resistance from the water because of the force applied forward.
To top it off...
B will be able to do a much more efficient catch because the little amount of bubble stream would have dispersed by the time he finished extending his shoulder. Thus he'll be able to hold on to more water and make a better push.
With that scenario and reasons, we can easily conclude that Swimmer B expends much lesser energy to move forward at the same velocity as Swimmer A.
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Take note that it is not just about the moment when the fingertips enter the surface that needs to be effortless. A lot of us do that with great ease.
However, because the "stretch" or the extension of the arm and shoulder gives us the feeling of extra surge and glide.. people tend to overdo this part of the swim and do the extension very forcefully in an attempt to achieve:
i) More surge
ii) To reach in front as fast as possible and as far as possible
For swimmers with tight shoulders especially, they'll need to use a lot of force to stretch the lats and shoulder girdle for them to feel a good extension.
When they use that force in the extension, you're actually stopping or slowing yourself down. I.E Negating the push phase of the opposite arm.
SOLUTIONS:
Take note about this 3 points:
i) It is virtually limitless in how effortless we can work to become because of the need to perform a movement with our arm - The extension/stretch. BUT we can practice to make it as effortless as humanly possible. Read (ii) below to find out how.
ii) Fast/Quick does not equate to FORCEFUL. It is possible to do things fast and quickly without using much force. One way is to master the movement by first doing it relaxly and slowly. Once the movement is mastered, the speed of executing the movement will become faster without the need to use much force to control the movement's execution.
iii) It is the push phase working together with the hip rotation that allows the surge to become significant. The stretch merely works as an additional aspect of streamlining the body.
CONCLUSION:
I have to let this off my chest as I conclude this chapter of new discovery about wave drag.
I felt bad about this and I have to apologize for using Vincent's swim against mine as an example. I've been very close with him that I kind of taken it for granted as I was too excited about the new discovery and I thought I started criticizing unnecessarily.
What went on was that my analysis of every detail of his swim was constantly occurring because I am very concerned about him trying too hard to catch up after missing the two weeks of training.
And thus I watched extremely closely every single stroke he took while doing my own swim and that's why I could tell the actual effort from the facial expression and the amount of force I felt from his entry and push as we swam virtually side by side or me lagging him by half a body length getting all his turbulence from the torrential amount of force.
Even though he is always very comfortable with race pace all the time, the way he needed 15-25 seconds to recover/catch breathe to talk with ease says quite a bit about the exertion level also and thus my conclusion during the breathing that he was pushing pretty hard - his RPE can of course tell the opposite because RPE is about how you feel over a certain effort and not the effort itself.
And with that analysis of his swim, I was excited to tell that by this slight change of my stroke to reduce the wave drag at the entry and extension, I've gained time on him while we maintain the same pace or effort throughout..
More importantly, at the end of the day, the big picture I was trying to get all of you guys to see is that we could all swim a much faster timing while using the same or even much lesser effort. As you can see from the timing of my last set of kick, I was actually able to do that much faster because I conserved energy from the swim while still getting a decent timing for the swim. That showed a lot about how an efficient form with lesser wave drag can save you tonnes of energy to expend later on whatever that is needed.
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Timing: - I was on high alert mode on wednesday night because of my lousy swim and my brain was hyperactive thus I could remember from my watch what are your individual timing. I was also consciously calculating how many seconds I won each and every one of those who came after me just to make my brains busier and not feel so bad about swimming so slowly. I was fuming for my own swim to be truthful but its more like I didn't have time to rest as I committed to help a young basketball team.
Vince, I thought the swim was a little off for you.. which I was guessing if you were feeling stressed out from your work. If you need any help for training do let me know what I can do for you. I hope you can do well for OSIM. One thing I thought you did really well was your kick was really consistent until the last set.. As for the pull sets, you managed to control the legs very well after the second set! I also noticed when you breathe left on your bilateral swims, your head comes up very high compared to your right side breathing. A few seconds can be shaved from there.
Last but not least, the old habit of not straightening the arm to 90% is coming back.. the push phase for you now ends with a 90degrees flexed elbow. Slight more extension behind will aid a lot more in the glide rather than the forceful extension. We both know that you have a harder time than average joes controlling your tremendous amount of strength but I hope you gain insights from this article and starts working towards a better stroke as we've always been spurring each other for from now on!=)
Pauline, you were SUPERB in your swim. Your kick was Shockingly fast to be honest. I'm sorry I underestimated you. =P Do take note in the last 2 sets of swim and kick when you're tired, you're not able to push the amount of water you controlled in your catch. Fret not as it is a good news if you're indeed able to do the catch to control a lot of water. Just make sure you keep training and keep pushing for the push even when you're tired.. if training yourself, rest more but still must do the push phase.. the strength and endurance will come in few weeks! =)
Oh, for your perusal, I included your previous 7x100 swim timing and you could see that even at your last sets you were faster than your that 7x100 swims. Crazy effort, crazy ability to understand and grasp concepts.. no wonder you're a surgeon... I am Truly Happy for you. =)
Sam, I am so happy you finally got into the focus and problem solving mode I've been preaching to you about. Your amount of focus is tremendous throughout the swim and your ability to evolve your stroke during your kick sets (especially the last one) is just so incredible. Congratulations on getting better on your mental training. =)
Ben, improvements are clearly visible as you nearly catch me in all of the first 50s of the hundreds. Keep working on your technique at a moderate pace right now, so they won't all fall apart when you go really hard at it in a few weeks' time. =)
Calvin and Wilson, I admire your determination in trying to get better set after set by putting in more and more effort especially in your kick sets. Calvin has shown so much more improvement in your kick since last time and Wilson improved by a freaking 3 minutes just by letting the fear of pacing go loose. For your swim, you still have to make sure the right hand enters a little shallower. Calvin, I'm also extremely extremely pleased with your swim.. your every stroke executed gives the same amount of glide and the rhythm of your swim was so constant from lap 1 to the last that if I were to take a metronome to just calculate how many strokes you take for 6 seconds, I can multiply it by the amount of time you swam to get the exact number of strokes you took for all the swim.
Teck Beng, I thought you were pretty off that night but the good news is it is normal and off nights usually happens to people who trains consistently night in and night out or follows a routine of swimming a specific frequency week after week. To take something out of it is that the off night was probably a sign that you've plateaued and/or your body needs more rest. It could also be just the body reacting to the purpose of the sets sequence I made. If plateauing is what you felt happened then it's time to shake the routine up a little.. either make it easier or slightly harder! Nonetheless, kudos to you who still finished 12 x 100 of swim.. it is an endurance set and you ENDURED. =)
Cheers
KK
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