Quick Hips

Okay, so I lied. Me bad.

This post reminds of something a college professor once told me, which I may have already shared with this group. The worst thing that could happen to him, professionally, was NOT publishing a paper with a glaring mistake in it. The worst thing was writing a paper with a major problem which no one corrected. The point being that nobody cared what he was doing anyways 🙂

But for the sake of completeness ... I identified a style in my original post and said it was only for the elite males. But there is an elite female who swims the same way: that is, transfers off of her dominant, right side hip, in one beat. It's the video below:

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In "Freestyle"

Brooke Bennett 400m Free (Perth 98) *
4.3

Female swimmer in the background gets off her right hip with one downbeat of right leg and middle of right pull.

Also in the same section is the following video.

Grant Hackett, Ian Thorpe, Rick Neethling at Pan Pacs 1999 4.4

The man in the background, Rick Neethling, is swimming exactly as the elite female in the previous video. Except a little quicker kicking.

Short commentary:

It IS possible for a rec swimmer to use this technique. But here's I think a key idea. Swinging your leg UP from the hip generates a tremendous amount of body rotation force and can greatly assist the pull. That's how to swim this way. Concentrate on the scissor action of the left leg pulling up and the right leg going down on the right arm pull and it can be accomplished quickly. Many elites, including most males, get the following kick pattern while breathing: lay out on left arm while turning head to breath right. As this happens, they kick with the left leg, following by a kick with the right leg which helps maintain momentum while they breath. This is pretty invariant at the elite male level as far as I can tell. Finally, the video above of Rik Neethling is my new favorite video. Mr. Neethling, obviously kicking less than Thorpe and Hackett employs a much higher stroke rate than those two swimmers. So once again, since rec swimmers kick minimally, if you want to go faster,
getting your stroke rate higher is in all likelihood the best way to do it.

Eric

[email hidden] (4precious) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Had a terrible swim the other day. Sometimes I learn more from those than the ones where I'm going good.

I've tried on and off to swim like Klete Keller and Grant Hackett for months. Even though I've studied the video data at great length, I missed exactly what they were doing, why it works so well for them, and why it's hard to swim that way.

The key notion of what they do has been discussed here many times. That is, they use a 4-beat rhythm but use 3 of the 4 beats while breathing. They are the ONLY two swimmers out of the dozens and dozens that we have video data on, that do this on a regular basis.

Now swimming this way makes a lot of common sense. Using three beats while breathing gives their bodies drive through the water during this difficult phase, and also provides more propulsion to the weak side pull, since most people are on their non-dominant arm while breathing.

But it's not easy to swim this way, and I finally figured out why. Maybe this is old hat to some. I spent too much time looking at ams and legs tryin to dechipher the timing. But the key is the hips.

These men rotate off of their dominant hip very, very fast. With only one downbeat of their leg while awkwardly in the middle of the dominant side pull, they twist their bodies and transfer their weight to the other hip. And both men have prominent chest and head left during the dominant side pull, which may make it easier to accomplish this very quick rotation. It almost looks like they "fall" to the opposite hip. (It appears that Keller is left handed, so he does everything on the oppositite side of Hackett, but it's the same timing)

The effect of rotating off the dominant hip in the middle of the pull with only one leg kick so compromises that arm, that I think this may be a technique for elite men only. They are strong enough to do it, and as mentiond, both men "lope" with prominent head and chest lift, which also aids this technique.

I'll say the same thing a different way.

If we look at a typical arm pull with the legs, the swimmer gets three beats per pull. And the first and third pull are the same leg as the arm. For example, during right arm pull: kick with right leg as arm descends to catch, kick with left leg in the middle of the pull, kick with right leg as the arm sweeps up and out (HERE is where most people transition to the other hip)

But these guys have turned that equation on it's head. That is, only one kick on the dominant side, which lands about where the middle beat would land. In anotherwords, where it is common to kick with the left leg while pulling with the right arm, these guys kick with the right leg. Like I said, awkward.

I'm going to give up trying to swim like this. The vast majority of swimmers use the traditional 3-beat pattern while not breathing, as shown below.

Donald Graft's video vault.

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THREE BEAT BREATHING SIDE

Olympics, Sydney 2000

Men's 1500m free, final; Grant Hackett, Australia, gold medal

World Championships, Barcelona, 2003

Men's 400m free, heat 8; Ian Thorpe, Australia 4.0

Klete Keller in background

Men's 400m free, heat 8; Ian Thorpe, Australia 3.2

Klete Keller in background

THREE BEAT NON-BREATHING SIDE:

Olympics, Sydney 2000

Men's 400m free final; Ian Thorpe; gold medal, world record

Swimmer in background

Women's 400m free, heat 3; Brooke Bennett (right), USA; Claudia Poll (left), Costa Rica

Swimmer in background

Men's 400 IM heat 6, free leg; Tom Dolan, USA

Dolan has very big roation while breathing, so the last kick with his right leg is actually with the side of his foot. And his left coming back on the other side isn't powerful. Nevertheless, his timing is the same as people using "classic 3-beat" on the non-breathing side.

Men's 200m free, semifinal 2; Ian Thorpe (left), Australia; Massimiliano Rosolino, Italy 5.3

Men's 200m free, semifinal 2; Ian Thorpe (left), Australia; Massimiliano Rosolino, Italy 4.6

Rosolino's strange kick has been well discussed before. But really, it's not much out of the norm. I contend he swims exactly like everyone listed here, except uses an upbeat with the same leg instead of a downbeat for the middle of his three beats on the non-breathing side. Balance and posture the same. Try it, it's easy to swim like he does.

Eric