question about recovery

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I noticed that if I keep my hand close to the body and my fingertips
close to the water when recovering, I move faster than if I don't. does
this make sense, or am I imagining this?

Andres

why wouldn't it make sense?

the finger tips close to the water force a hig elbow recovery, and this
combined with keeping the hand close to the body represents the shortest
line between two points - your hip at the exit and in line with your
shoulder at the entry.

Quoted post said:

I noticed that if I keep my hand close to the body and my fingertips
close to the water when recovering, I move faster than if I don't. does
this make sense, or am I imagining this?

It makes sense to me, especially considering that's pretty much the
recommended way of doing it.

Thank you both. I do have a high elbow recovery and always thought that
my recovery was good. Recently I have been doing a lot of long slow and
have cut my strokes x 25 yds to 15. I have noticed that if I do the
close to the body hand with fingers barely on top of the surface, I do
15 strokes comfortably without having to glide much on the last stroke
before the flip. OTOH, if I relax my arm and don't think of the
recovery I'll have to glide more before the flip.

something that I have noticed is that my ideal strokes are 17 for
speed. However, by doing long slow, I am doing much better with the
speed. At first, it was hard to do long slow. I could barely do 16-17.
I started doing a lot of shark fin drills to get it down to 15. Now, I
can totally relax and do the 15 strokes and when I do a hard set, I do
much better. I think that by doing long slow, it has forced me to
breath a little less frequently. when I cut the strokes and increase my
speed, I have plenty of O2.

Does any of this make sense?

Andres

"Otis B. Driftwood" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted post said:

I noticed that if I keep my hand close to the body and my fingertips
close to the water when recovering, I move faster than if I don't. does
this make sense, or am I imagining this?

It makes sense to me, especially considering that's pretty much the
recommended way of doing it.

Only by some coaches.

This, like so many other things in swimming, is an example of the complexity
and multiple optimums available to a swimmer; and a reminder that it has
always been, and should continue to be, an ART rather than a SCIENCE.

Quoted post said:

I noticed that if I keep my hand close to the body and my fingertips
close to the water when recovering, I move faster than if I don't. does
this make sense, or am I imagining this?

It makes perfect sense. In principle, with your elbow well bent and
your hand near your body during recovery, your moment of inertia will be
much smaller and the torque required to recover the arm will be less.
Remember, it's I = MR^2. A small decrease in radius can make a big
improvement.

A smaller moment of inertia should mean both a quicker recovery and less
fishtailing. Less fishtailing should mean less drag, and perhaps a
faster swimmer.

In practice it works for most people, but there are some exceptions
(most notably Janet Evans). If your arms are short, the reduction in
torque may not be so important. And you may be able to use that torque
to add a bit of a body dolphin to your stroke.

Ross

Quoted message said:

I noticed that if I keep my hand close to the body and my fingertips
close to the water when recovering, I move faster than if I don't. does
this make sense, or am I imagining this?

Andres

Interesting. Whenever we do "drill" sets, I often do "finger tip
drag". You simply drag your finger tips along the top of the water as
you recover. Like you, it usually feels quite good, like it helps my
stroke a lot. I've never correlated it with speed, however. Certainly
at the elite level there's plenty of evidence that "finger tip drag" is
not THE path to success. All kinds of stiff armed, over the top, or
flat recoveries. I suspect that the slow, contemplative nature of
drilling is not a luxury that can be afforded when going for maximum
speed. That's a good point jtaylor has made - it's what you do being
raced down on both sides while your blood chemistry crumbles under the
effort that matters.

Eric

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I noticed that if I keep my hand close to the body and my fingertips
close to the water when recovering, I move faster than if I don't. does
this make sense, or am I imagining this?

Andres

Interesting. Whenever we do "drill" sets, I often do "finger tip
drag". You simply drag your finger tips along the top of the water as
you recover. Like you, it usually feels quite good, like it helps my
stroke a lot. I've never correlated it with speed, however. Certainly
at the elite level there's plenty of evidence that "finger tip drag" is
not THE path to success. All kinds of stiff armed, over the top, or
flat recoveries. I suspect that the slow, contemplative nature of
drilling is not a luxury that can be afforded when going for maximum
speed. That's a good point jtaylor has made - it's what you do being
raced down on both sides while your blood chemistry crumbles under the
effort that matters.

Eric

There is a movement towards straight-arm recovery during sprint freestyle
amongst many 'elite' coaches.

We were at the Grand Prix meet in Indy the other week and i got to watch
Natalie Coughlin using it live for the first time. It doesn't look as messy
and hurried as you would think it would.

Steve

The Australians, ever the true pioneers in this sport, have been
looking at straight arm recovery for awhile. The chief reason for
their interest is the belief that when a swimmer increases their kick
during a sprint, they tend to slow down their stroke rate. However, if
they are using straight-arm recovery, the stroke rate tends to stay the
same or even increase as the swimmer really gets on their kick.

Eric

Quoted post said:

Thank you both. I do have a high elbow recovery and always thought that
my recovery was good. Recently I have been doing a lot of long slow and
have cut my strokes x 25 yds to 15. I have noticed that if I do the
close to the body hand with fingers barely on top of the surface, I do
15 strokes comfortably without having to glide much on the last stroke
before the flip. OTOH, if I relax my arm and don't think of the
recovery I'll have to glide more before the flip.

something that I have noticed is that my ideal strokes are 17 for
speed. However, by doing long slow, I am doing much better with the
speed. At first, it was hard to do long slow. I could barely do 16-17.
I started doing a lot of shark fin drills to get it down to 15. Now, I
can totally relax and do the 15 strokes and when I do a hard set, I do
much better. I think that by doing long slow, it has forced me to
breath a little less frequently. when I cut the strokes and increase my
speed, I have plenty of O2.

Does any of this make sense?

If you are like me, when you use long, slow strokes, you concentrate
more on the shape and efficiency of each stroke, so it makes sense to
me that your speed would improve. But if you can maintain the shape
and efficiency as you increase the tempo, I'll bet you'll see a lot
more speed improvement.

Otis B. Driftwood said:

If you are like me, when you use long, slow strokes, you concentrate
more on the shape and efficiency of each stroke, so it makes sense to
me that your speed would improve. But if you can maintain the shape
and efficiency as you increase the tempo, I'll bet you'll see a lot
more speed improvement.

Actually, one of the things I try to do is not to do drills that are
separated from swimming. I try to swim non stop and incorporate a drill
into a few laps. So, I'll do five laps of long slow focusing on keeping
hands close to my body and the water. Then, w/o stopping I'll do five
more laps focusing on the glide, or the catch, or something else. My
hope is that when I start focusing on a particular thing, the thing
that I focused on before will stay with me. I usually do a 2200 yd
non-stop swim and I focus one one thing for five laps. I hate to stop
when I swim. When I do tempo, I still don't stop. I'll do five laps of
tempo and then I'll try to recover w/o loosing form. I am hoping that
by doing this, the things that I'll do in long slow will get
incvorporated into the tempos. What I have noticed is that my tempos
are getting easier to do, even though my stroke count always increases
from 15 to 17 per length.

I do absolutely love the feeling of doing lap after lap of long slow
w/o effort feeling totally relaxed.

Andres

jtaylor said:

"Otis B. Driftwood" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted post said:

I noticed that if I keep my hand close to the body and my fingertips
close to the water when recovering, I move faster than if I don't. does
this make sense, or am I imagining this?

It makes sense to me, especially considering that's pretty much the
recommended way of doing it.

Only by some coaches.

This, like so many other things in swimming, is an example of the complexity
and multiple optimums available to a swimmer; and a reminder that it has
always been, and should continue to be, an ART rather than a SCIENCE.

Only synchronized swimming is an art. In virtually every other form
of swimming, it's raw speed that counts -- you don't gain any points
for looking pretty or swimming with fewer strokes. Beware of any
coach or salesman who refers to swimming as an 'art', because he/she
is allowing for the possibility that the program need not produce
measurable improvements, only better looking swimming.