Triathlon and Swimming Economy I

We wrote about triathlon and running economy, but there is a swimming economy.  “Swimming with the body” instead of swimming with your arms and legs; same thing for running, we should maximize the use of gravity when running instead of running with the legs.  It is more economical; and above all, it is economical when going fast.  We need to be economical when going fast in today’s world.  It is the SWAT karma: “It is not only well-done and precise but fast.”

Science is not a democracy, so there are ways to do things that have more advantages than others.  There is a way of doing things well and efficiently. Furthermore, technique can improve all the time as it is shown in the video below.  The video claimed that there is an individual technique for each individual.  We should know that swimming technique is just one and we can adapt it to individuals depending on their circumstances and the individual’s capacity to learn. ¿Is a Paralympic swimmer? Every individual can improve his/her technique, but it can take years to see the difference.  We can see the following swimmer with the swimmer’s head lifted; he can improve by looking at the bottom of the pool but it would change the entire stroke and perhaps it is not worth it considering time, effort, and where he is competitively at the present time.  It is very important to know Physics in order to start swimming, considering the body position, drag (including kicking and pulling) or support, under Physics’ premises.  Remember from previous post on running economy, we have to know the variables playing a role swimming; we should not accept that things could not be improved.  At the end, swimming can be interpreted with basic Newtonian Physics in order to have full advantage of the vectors that works on the stroke and resistance of the water.

After what it was said, let’s look at videos.  

1) The number of strokes does not change with speed.

2) The speed of doing the stroke is the only thing that changes.

3) Open water swimming needs more concentration to perform as well as in the swimming pool.

4) In the Olympics finals, the number of strokes for the first eight swimmers. The number of strokes is the same less than 35 strokes per 50 meters for males when going more than 200 meters.