When I first started swimming in earnest three years ago, I had a habit
of holding my thumb next to the other fingers. It's a habit I wanted
to break to try swimming with the thumb away from the hand to create
the so called "lunate", or crescent shape which mimics bird's wings and
is often used by elite swimmers.
Well, now my ingrained habit is to swim with the thumb out. It's
rather amazing what affect this has on the muscles in the arm. It
seems to "activate", or tension the muscles in the wrist, since holding
the thumb out involves a lot of muscles there. It even seems to give a
little bit different leverage on the water which you can feel all the
way up at your shoulder.
Anyways, I like the added feeling of power you get with the thumb out.
But I hate the bubbles! I love looking at the end of the pool and
seeing relativley still water above my head as my hand enters. It
seems a mark of skill. And yet I've looked at video of Michael Phelps
- he's a lunate guy, and I can see some bubbles trailing off his thumb
as his hand enters.
There was recently a comment about trapping air bubbles beneath your
foot during kicking. Fun with bubbles. I've seen a string of bubbles
attached to my thumb as I cruise into the wall - if you "flick" your
thumb, it sheds the bubbles. Kind of cool. I think they call that
"shedding vortices", which you can see elites do on video - it always
happens when their changes direction or increase velocity. It always
indicates a point in the cycle when they're pulling hard.
Anyways, now that I have the thumb out, I can't seem to get my old
habit back of holding all fingers tight and getting still water above
my head. I suspect there's no right or wrong way to do it. But you
all might have opinions.
Eric