Biceps Freestyle Revisited

[censored] Hannula has also moved away from "slicing/sculling" and apparently
so has much of Australia, but it sounds like they are depending a lot
more on shoulder strength than on biceps strength. Still, it sounds like
they are doing something similar with the hand position, ie bending the
wrist more.

"These swimmers were entering the water, catching that water and
pressing the fingertips downward and getting the wrist up over the hand,
and the elbow up over the wrist. The hand then follows a downward and
backward path extremely close to a straight line. It was a most
efficient stroking pattern to watch. I remember Robin Leamy, a former
American Record holder, stating that this is how he attempted to swim
freestyle over 15 years ago when I worked clinics with him. My thoughts
then were that it may be OK for a sprinter like Robin, but not the best
method for freestyle swimmers in general. Thorpe and Hackett aren’t
sprinters, and it is working amazingly well for them."

<http://www.swimmingcoach.org/articles/200006/200006_3.asp>

(Larry Weisenthal) said:

To review (replay of part of a message I posted in August, 2004):

I hypothesize that swimmers who commence serious training for the
first time as adults are foreever disadvantaged, compared to swimmers
who trained seriously as children and teenagers.

The US Modern Pentathlon association recruits prospective modern
pentathletes from among the ranks of the nation's college swimmers,
e.g.

http://www.modern-pentathlon.com/swimming.html

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Pentathletes usually have a swimming background, which is considered to be the only Pentathlon discipline that cannot be taught at a high level at an older age.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

For this reason, good swimming standards are considered to be a "precondition" for participation in Modern pentathlon. <<

Some have argued that the advantage of former youth swimmers throughout
life is relating to technical factors, but this is obviously not the
whole story.

For example, fencing is a much more complicated and technical
discipline than swimming, yet fencing is a discipline which may be
mastered by adults (to the elite international level), whereas
swimming is much more difficult to master (to the elite,international
level).

My wife and I swim at the same time as a slightly younger couple, who
are the parents of an Olympic swimming medalist. They took up
swimming as adults at about the same time my wife and I did, spend a
little more time at it, but are only just about as proficient as us,
despite presumably superior swimming genetics. The only swim parents
I know who are really good at swimming are those who were former
competitive swimmers as children and teenagers. These people can stay
dry for several years,resume swimming for a month, and swim circles
around all of the adult fitness swimmers who have been diligently
practicing, training, any paying for stroke clinics for decades.

For 10 years, I've been writing about turkey wings and breast
(pectoralis) muscles, compared to duck wings and breasts. The turkey
muscles lack myoglobin, mitochondria, and capillaries (which are the
things which make red muscles red). Duck muscles have these, and so
ducks are able to use theirwings for propulsion. Human legs evolved
for propulsion and are nicely red.

Human pecs and triceps and lats evolved for short bursts of power (such
as throwing and fighting and climbing up off the ground, etc.) and are
more like turkey muscle than duck muscle. Swimmers who take up the
sport as kids, I believe, can convert their muscle fibers to become
more "red," allowing them to use these muscles for long distance
propulsion (beyond the 45 second limit of white muscle, before lactic
acidosis sets in, because the muscles, lacking myoglobin,
mitochondria, and capillaries, can't clear the lactate).

So I've been trying to figure out a method for swimming which
circumvents the disadvantages of the person who first takes up the
sport as an adult.

In other words, try to minimize the use of "white" muscle (triceps,
pecs, lats) and maximize the use of red muscle.

Step number one was to try and swim with a style which minimized active
motion of pecs, triceps, lats, and maximized use of core, trunk muscles
(which maintain posture and which are probably more "red" than the
upper body swimming muscles). I described this earlier this summer.

For step number 2, I looked to the sport of rowing.

Unlike swimming, rowing is a sport which adults can take up as adults
and readily rise to world class levels. The main rowing muscles are
the leg press muscles, trunk muscles, and ... biceps. (nb: I just took
up "erging" (on the Concept II machine) a couple of months ago. I've
improved very rapidly; so much so that I'm getting dreams of becoming
nationally ranked and qualifying for the Crash B sprints at Harvard.
Yet, at swimming, I've been diligently working at it for more than 20
years, and I'll never rise above the level of a respectable
triathlon-level age group swimmer.)

I'd never thought much about biceps before. They aren't real important
in swimming. But are there reasons to think that they'd be more
"red"-like in character?

I think, yes. Firstly, unlike the triceps and lats (which are used
mainly for short busts of activity, save for swimming), the biceps have
been used for millenia for endurance type activity, such as carrying
babies and firewood and food. So maybe biceps are less inherently
fatiguable than are triceps? Well, I found a research article which
found that this, indeed, seems to be true.

But try this for yourself and see what you think:

Get a small weight, such as a 5 pound dumbell. Do repetitive one hand
curls...not fast, but on a cadence which mimics swimming. Slow,
deliberate, rest in between. Swimming cadence. I found that I could
do this more or less indefinitely, or until I became bored with it (you
may need to use lesser or greater weight, depending on strength). Now,
I repeated this, using my triceps. Bent over at the waist. Elbow held
in line with my trunk, next to my ribs. Weight hanging down. Now,
lift weight up,
as in biceps curls. Same cadence. Same rest. What I found was that,
right around 45 seconds, it suddenly got to be rather hard. When I
kept going, I definitely started to develop a "burn" at an exercise
level which I was able to maintain without a burn, using my biceps.

Now, some people might object that maybe my biceps are simply stronger
than my triceps. OK. I'll grant this, but, playing around with
different weights, I pretty certain that I'm measuring fatiguability
and not strength, per se. I start out at a level which is equally easy
with both biceps and triceps. But, after 45 seconds, it starts to get
hard with triceps (just like what happens after my first 50 meters of
swimming), while it remains reasonably easy with biceps.

O.K.

When I wrote this last summer, I described a "biceps freestyle" stroke
technique which was based on a slicing/sculling motion. I had some
success with this, but the problem is that it is critically dependent
upon the angle of attack, and some days I'd be grooved; some not, and I
could never get real consistent.

So I went back to the drawing board. Paid lots of attention to the way
my arms worked on the Concept II erg machine. Then tried to
recapitulate that movement in the water.

Voila. I've got something which is working beautifully well for me.
So well, that I know already I'm going to stick with it. I am very
anxious to find a volunteer to try it out and report back.

What I did was to junk the slicing/sculling stuff. I also junked the
high elbow entirely. In fact, another name for my new stroke (in
addition to biceps freestyle) would be "dropped elbow freestyle."

Stand up straight and tall. Raise your right hand straight up over your
head, as if you are going to ask a question in class. Only, to make it
a shoulder friendly arm raise, rotate your hand as soon as it reaches
full extension upward, so that your pinky is forward and your thumb is
back (palm facing the direction toward the right side of the head).
This is how you want to enter the water; the external hand rotation (to
get the palm facing toward the top of the head) provides a very early
catch, which is what you want (n.b. you do NOT want to glide!).

Now pull your palm in a line staight downward so that your thumb hits
your right nipple (for a guy or flat chested gal). You do this by
contracting your biceps, flaring your elbow out to the side as your
hand descends to your nipple.

Now stand in front of a mirror and bend over at the waist, so that your
upper body is parallel to the floor (as it would be while you are
swimming). Do the same hand motion, watching yourself in the mirror.
Note that your elbow is dropping downward and your elbow is flaring
outward and your hand is pulling so that your thumb reaches your right
nipple. Keep your wrist and hand properly tensioned to maintain a good
grip on the water. The catch is very important with this stroke. You
want to feel as if you are grabbing onto a water "handle" and holding
on to it while your biceps pulls your body up so that your nipple meets
your hand (when you are in the water; when practicing on land, you are
obviously just pulling your hand down through the air. What is most
important is to isolate the biceps in doing this. None of this anchor
the forearm and keep the elbow high and rigid while using the lats to
pull the locked forearm/arm unit backward. Get that out of your mind
entirely. You will be powering yourself by grabbing onto the water and
then jacknifing the forearm, using the biceps, which will result in an
intentionally dropped elbow as the hand is pulled toward the
ipsilateral nipple. The stroke is finished (once the hand reaches the
nipple...and the thumb should actually brush lightly against the chest,
if you are doing it right) with a sturdy rear quadrant push back, but
driven more by the rotating body and with only a modest to moderate
assist by the triceps. The purpose of the push back is to maintain
momentum until the opposite hand enters and catches (this assumes that
most people who benefit from using this type of stroke are lousy
kickers and can't maintain momentum with their kick).

I think that you'll find this is very easy to learn and you should be
pleased to find that your biceps, indeed, do not fatigue after the
first 50 yards, the way your lats and triceps do (even though the
biceps/dropped elbow freestyle does utilize a little bit of a triceps
assist on the push back, the triceps are well rested by NOT having to
remain tensioned to keep maintain the high elbow position of
conventional freestyle).

Of course, since you'll be using "new" muscles for swimming, it'll take
a bit of training to use the new stroke to good advantage. But I think
you'll find it to be both easy, comfortable, and fast (as a distance
swimming stroke) within only a week or two.

Remember to keep your lumbar spine tensioned to keep your butt and
thighs from dropping, but don't worry about your head position. If
it's more comfortable looking forward, just do it. If you prefer to
swim more in the neutral head position, that's OK too (though not as
advantageous for open water swimming). It may actually help to look
forward a bit at first, so that you can see what your hand and forearm
are doing and keep them in the best position (hand skimming parallel to
the water surface to meet your nipple.

A real bonus of this, for me (and maybe for others) is that swimming
becomes exceptionally good cross training for rowing ("erging"😉 and
erging becomes great cross training for swimming. When I use the
Concept II erg machine, I try to use, as much as possible, the same
angle of pulling motion as I do with my biceps freestyle swimming. To
this end, I don't use classic "erging" technique; rather, I bend
forward at the waist and duck my head downward as I reach forward to
extend my arms fully above my head. Then I make sure to provide a
distinct biceps assist to pulling the cord (i.e. I use my biceps a bit
more and my leg presses a bit less). I also "finish" the inward pull
on the wooden handle of the cord, pulling it all the way until it
touches my chest at the level of my nipples. I really can feel that
I'm using the same muscles swimming as I do when I'm erging.

- Larry W

Wolf, I don't think what Larry is describing is in any way related to
what the Australians are doing. If you read his description carefully,
it really is almost a new stroke.

I looked briefly at the link. We now have definitive numbers for Ian
Thorpe's kicking: 2:28 for 200 meters long course! And this after a
couple week layoff. So the guy can go sub 1:15 for 100 meters on a
kickboard. So don't bother watching him swim unless you wear flippers.
Otherwise you're not in the same swimming universe.

Eric

Quoted message said:

Wolf, I don't think what Larry is describing is in any way related to
what the Australians are doing. If you read his description carefully,
it really is almost a new stroke.

I looked briefly at the link. We now have definitive numbers for Ian
Thorpe's kicking: 2:28 for 200 meters long course! And this after a
couple week layoff. So the guy can go sub 1:15 for 100 meters on a
kickboard. So don't bother watching him swim unless you wear flippers.
Otherwise you're not in the same swimming universe.

I'm not saying they are the same. Obviously they are quite different.
But the bending of the wrist is the same. The pulling part of my stroke
is much like Hannula describes.

Just received the following e-mail:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Dear Larry,

Worked for about an hour at noon today over various distances using
your
updated technique, and found it to be superior to either your
originally
described technique or my "normal" freestyle. Some observations:

1. The modified biceps freestyle stroke does not seem to generate as
much leg-sinking torque as other methods. Maybe this is because of the
shallow pulling depth. I found myself using only a very modest 2-beat
kick
to keep my legs up near the surface. This is an important benefit.

2. Stroke count was as low or lower than my best "normal" freestyle. I
know you don't ordinarily worry much about stroke count, but it may be
a
useful metric in this case.

3. At equal relative perceived effort levels which I would describe as
"comfortable," modified biceps freestyle was about 6-7 percent faster
than
my "normal" freestyle over distances from 50y to 200y. Breathing was
also
less stressed.

4. At a more intense effort level, for short distances I was actually
faster than the 30ish "real swimmer" in an adjacent lane who was doing
a
very long set at a pace of just under 1:00 per 50y. This has never
happened
before. I think it scared both of us a little.

In summary, it was a promising start. I am a [baby boom generation,
running background]

Redact and share as you see fit.

Thanks for your continued interest in swimmers.

Best regards,

[name redacted]

(Larry Weisenthal) said:

What I did was to junk the slicing/sculling
stuff. I also junked the high elbow entirely.
In fact, another name for my new stroke (in
addition to biceps freestyle) would be
"dropped elbow freestyle."

Actually. it sounds like half the breaststroke
pull.

Quoted message said:

From Manatee:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Actually. it sounds like half the breaststroke pull.<<

Quoted message said:

From Man o' Me:

Except what I'm describing is pure "drag," while breaststroke pull is a
distinct diagonal scull, where the majority of the propulsion is
"lift." Salo refers to the hands and forearms in breaststroke as being
"blades," instead of paddles. Traditional breaststroke also utilizes a
high elbow, and not a dropped elbow.

Here's what I wrote in a post some months ago, describing how one would
swim biceps style in the other strokes:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

So, in biceps backstroke, you enter wider and not as far back. You being your

catch and jackknife flex your forearm to draw your hand toward your
nipple, as
you roll. Unlike regular backstroke, you don't try to throw a tennis
ball at
your feet (use your triceps to throw your hand toward your feet). You
enter
wide and not too far back, catch the water, and pull your hand in as
you rotate
to your side to almost touch your nipple. Then just exit and recover.
Takes a
little practice, but you should be able to master it in a single
session.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

In biceps fly, you enter wide and jacknife flex both forearms and hands

(isolating on your biceps) to pull the palms of your hands into your
nipples.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

In biceps breast, you push your hands very wide apart and jacknife flex your

forearms, sculling your thumbs toward your nipples until your hands
meet in the
midline and then shoot forward into your end stroke streamline.

....In the presently-described biceps/dropped elbow free, you are
pulling straight back on the water, with a dropped elbow, leading with
your palms. In traditional breaststroke, the elbows are high and the
thumbs lead the stroke.

Man o' Tea said:

(Larry Weisenthal) said:

What I did was to junk the slicing/sculling
stuff. I also junked the high elbow entirely.
In fact, another name for my new stroke (in
addition to biceps freestyle) would be
"dropped elbow freestyle."

Actually. it sounds like half the breaststroke
pull.

I don't see how you get breaststroke from that description.

(Larry Weisenthal) said:

...In the presently-described biceps/dropped elbow free, you are
pulling straight back on the water, with a dropped elbow, leading with
your palms. In traditional breaststroke, the elbows are high and the
thumbs lead the stroke.

....and the hand goes out and then in and back. In the biceps crawl,
the hand pretty much follows the centerline of the body all the way
back, yes? The centerline crawl?

(Larry Weisenthal) said:

Except what I'm describing is pure "drag,"
while breaststroke pull is a distinct
diagonal scull,

Well there's an outsweep, but the insweep
pulls back towards the chest like you
describe.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

In the biceps crawl,

the hand pretty much follows the centerline of the body all the way
back, yes? The centerline crawl? <<

Yes; that's a good description (also a good name; to more clearly
connote what is going on, maybe it should be called "dropped elbow
biceps centerline crawl"😉.

I was thinking "Freestyle by Larry". That would have to be shortened
to "Free Larry" so it would fit on the bumper sticker.

So the question of our age could then become, "Who's Larry?" 🙂

Eric

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

Quoted message said:

I was thinking "Freestyle by Larry". That would have to be shortened
to "Free Larry" so it would fit on the bumper sticker.

So the question of our age could then become, "Who's Larry?" 🙂

Eric

perhaps someone can distribute buttons - "Larry Lives!" ...there are periods
on this NG when one could be forgiven for thinking he didn't anymore.

(Larry Weisenthal) said:

maybe it should be called "dropped elbow
biceps centerline crawl"😉.

Or the "drop-bi crawl." :-)

(Larry Weisenthal) said:

maybe it should be called "dropped elbow
biceps centerline crawl"😉.

Or, "drop-bi crawl" for short.

I fooled around with the Larry Lives! stroke today. Very little is
radically different from my usual stroke. I arch, I kick, I turn over,
I don't glide, I pull straight. I didn't go so far as to whack myself
midstroke, but I definitely changed the elbow angle of the stroke during
the middle half (straight arm 1/4, angle 1/2, straightening arm 1/4)
from a boomerang obtuse to distinctly acute. I had the sense that
having upper and lower arms closer to eachother might be more efficient
than farther apart. I don't know anything about dynamics; possibly the
limb pushes more water than its width and when the double limbs are
closer, the pushed water from each almost overlaps, creating a wider
patch of pushed water, more square inches, than would be the case by
amore nearly straight arm. That sounds really confusing. Think two one
foot paddles 8 inches apart pushing more water than one 2 foot paddle.
If my sense is right, then it might not be the choice of pushing muscle,
but rather the shape of the pushing surface that makes it all seem
easier. If I am right, then birds weren't intelligently designed. But
that's another story.

rtk

email hidden (Larry Weisenthal) said:

I hypothesize that swimmers who commence serious training for the
first time as adults are foreever disadvantaged, compared to swimmers
who trained seriously as children and teenagers.

Amen, brother!

As a corollary, I propose that butterfly be banished from Masters
swimming events.

Seriously, I started swimming at age 21. I swim with a friend who
started at about 30. We are both very proficient swimmers, but we
will never be able to do times like those of people who started
swimming as children.

And neither of us can do fly.

On the other hand, my observation is that people who start swimming as
adults can develop superb endurance and make for good ong-distance
swimmers.

How do those observations (cannot do fly, good at endurance) fit with
your hypothesis, Larry?

Hi Fizz...nice to "see" you again ...

You state the adults can develop "superb endurance and make for good
long-distance swimmers."

During the last 5 years, there have been about 50 age 11-12 year old
girls in the USA who have swum the 1650 freestyle in under 18 minutes.

Compare this with the times swim by women and men at this year's US
Masters nationals:

http://www.usms.org/comp/scnats05/realtime/

I think something like one woman and only a relative handful of men
went sub-18.

Now, I don't have corresponding data for masters track relative to
youth track, but, if someone has the time to do the research, here's
what I think you'd find:

Masters track times are much more competitive with youth track times
than masters swimming times are with youth swimming times.

It would be very common to find top ranked masters distance track
athletes who didn't take up running until adulthood, but relatively
uncommon to find top ranked masters distance swimming athletes who
didn't take up swimming until adulthood.

On the other hand, I have known several "adult-onset" swimmers who did,
indeed, develop a highly serviceable butterfly.

So I think that the "skill" factors of swimming can be learned as
adults, but adults are disadvantaged much more by the sorry, "white"
state of their swimming muscles than they are by deficiencies in
technical skill.

Which is the idea behind "drop-bi-crawl" (nod to manatee)

Why don't you "drop-bi" sometime and tell us what happens when you do?

P.S. The one woman at US Masters nationals who did go sub-18 was Laurie
Hug, who was a former college and age-group swimmer.

email hidden (Larry Weisenthal) said:

Hi Fizz...nice to "see" you again ...

You state the adults can develop "superb endurance and make for good
long-distance swimmers."

During the last 5 years, there have been about 50 age 11-12 year old
girls in the USA who have swum the 1650 freestyle in under 18 minutes.

Compare this with the times swim by women and men at this year's US
Masters nationals:

http://www.usms.org/comp/scnats05/realtime/

I think something like one woman and only a relative handful of men
went sub-18.

By "endurance," I didn't mean anything as short as a 1650. I mean
Channel crossings, etc. For whatever reason, you don't see young
people doing those kind of distances.

As for adult-onset swimmers developing serviceable butterfly, I only
know one person who has been even marginally successful at that. By
"successful," I mean that they can do the fly sets without screaming
in pain. 🙂

-- Dave