Quoted message said:Well, here are rules and then there are rules. The official rules for freestyle are, as Don says,
rather terse. About the only ones I can think of are that you have to stay in your land, cannot
use assistive devices such as floatition or pulling on the lane ropes, and cannot swim more than
15 m of each lap under water.
It was a poor choice of words on my part to use the word "rules" because I really wanted
recommendations.
Quoted message said:
However, there is a second level of rules that trial and error have suggested are appropriate for
most swimmers. These are the ones that most of us learn to swim by -- high elbow recovery, six-
beat kick, reach forward to catch, pull through and push out, exhale under water and turn your
head to the side to breathe, etc. Perhaps it is important in the context of this conversation to
admit that these are not really rules. They are guidelines that have passed the test of time.
Exactly what I needed!
Quoted message said:As others have said, there is an optimal point to end the push and withdraw the hand from the
water -- different for every swimmer but generally somewhere in the vicinity of the hip -- which
represents an optimal tradeoff between efficiency, effective application of force, and
minimization of drag. Most swimmers find this point simply by paying attention to their stroke.
Swimming is very much an activity guided by feel. If you feel that what you're doing is cheating
you out of some effective power or is creating excessive drag, it probably is.
I appreciate your input. I started paying attention today to my hands and realized that I was not
bringing them up correctly. I was pulling some water upward with my hands. Just by paying attention
on that one aspect seems to have paid some dividends already...and I didn't even know I was doing
something wrong! So, thanks to all for responding.
Pat in TX