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God I hate these titles. It's potentially faster than dolphin kicking within about a foot of the surface, or in very shallow water. That's all. If you're trying
by imh 11y ago
God I hate these titles. It's potentially faster than dolphin kicking within about a foot of the surface, or in very shallow water. That's all. If you're trying to swim fast, your underwater is going to be deeper and that last foot is about the transition anyways.
So why shouldn't this be faster than freestyle? We know that deeper than a foot, this should be the same as dolphin kicking. That's the current mode of underwater competition swimming, so we have a good comparison. If dolphin kicking is faster than swimming, we'd expect to see swimmers staying underwater until the rules say they have to surface. We see that in backstroke, so underwater swimming must be faster than backstroke. We see some butterfliers go to the limits too, but not all. For sprint freestyle, however, they surface pretty much immediately, so as you could have inferred from the clickbaity title I'm calling bullshit.
- teej 11y agoI know absolutely nothing about swimming, so forgive me if this sounds dumb, but I don't feel like current competitive trends is evidence against this new technique. It's very possible that top swimmers are at a local maxima. New techniques being discovered and transforming the competitive scene has happened at least two times in other sports - high jump and long distance running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_Flop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_Flop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)#The_Young_Shuffle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)#The_Youn...
- osivertsson 11y agoGood point, one more example from ski jumping: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-style https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-style
- braythwayt 11y agoNo need to leave swimming: Butterfly was invented as a way of going faster in Breaststroke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_stroke#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_stroke#History
- 0xCMP 11y agoThe catch here is that in competitive swimming, as mentioned in the article, FINA said that you can not go past ~15m underwater from the start or turns. The reason was that it is faster. Since they block that from being too long then they effectively prevent changes to the strokes from taking advantage of that too much. So while it's faster, possibly, it's not really possible to be used.
- stephencanon 11y agoAnd the skate technique in cross-country skiing (https://www.skiinghistory.org/history/cross-country-skating-how-it-started https://www.skiinghistory.org/history/cross-country-skating-...)
- jacksonblack 11y ago> I don't feel like current competitive trends is evidence against this new technique. Indeed it is not, because i've been Fish Kicking since the 1980s when i was a swimmer in college. It isn't anything new. If you watched swimming competitions earlier than the 1980s you'd see Fish Kicking swimmers in freestyle and backstroke competitions, too. It isn't anything new. And it isn't as effective as other strokes because humans need to breathe while they swim. Fish Kicking is done submerged.
- Alupis 11y agoThis is not a new swimming stroke. It's Dolphin Kicking. In swim team, after the dive, we were trained to dolphin kick until surfaced, then go into the stroke (freestyle or butterfly depending on the race).
- hobbyjogger 11y agoFosbury flop, mediocre example. High jump was a relatively new sport (~a century vs. humans swimming for 20,000 years) and his technique was only made possible by the then-recent addition of a very soft and raised landing pad. The Fosbury Flop wasn't really an option before that, when you tended to land on dirt 6 or 7 feet below the bar.[1] Cliff Young, bad example. Young won because no one had ever done a race that long before (that was the first year) and the other competitors slept way too much. Once everyone else caught on the next year, Young never won the race again.[1] The "Young Shuffle" had little to do with it and is definitively not "transformative" or even used by any modern elite distance runners. In fact, the "Young Shuffle" is how anyone runs if forced to slow down to walking pace -- you can watch the "Young Shuffle" live anywhere you can find some elderly hobby joggers out for a cruise.[3] [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/1912_Konstantinos_Tsiklitiras2.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/1912_Kon... [2] http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/07/1068013394824.html?from=storyrhs http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/07/1068013394824.h... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OD96zocXRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OD96zocXRU
- teej 11y agoThanks for the feedback. I definitely didn't understand the context around why the Fosbury Flop became possible.
- imh 11y agoI don't mean that current trends are evidence against it. I mean the physics is against it being any different from dolphin kick anywhere but right at the surface. The rest of my argument was why dolphin kick isn't faster than freestyle. Then the question is why don't they just stay within a foot of the surface? The problem is buoyancy. You have to be able to control your depth to keep from surfacing before you want to. It's hard to do that so close to the surface.
- dang 11y agoWe changed the title to the subtitle (minus its own baity bit).
- imh 11y agoThanks. You guys doing that is one of my favorite parts of HN :)