
The performance and physics of the fish kick - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/is-this-new-swim-stroke-the-fastest-yet
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irishcoffee
I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that this isn't even remotely new. Anyone
who's watched the olympics knows they do the first 25-40m underwater for the
butterfly or IM.

Hell, 20 years ago when I was on swim team I did the first 20m underwater. Not
sure why this is "new."

Edit: yes I read the article. Doing it on your side is also not new. Has
nobody ever watched the olympics?

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wodenokoto
The staying under water thing is according to the the article about 30-40
years old. That to me is extremely new. After all we've been swimming for
thousands of years.

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apalmer
Yes... until you take into account that this is only really useful for swim
races, and is not really practical for 'survival' swimming.

Its a very difficult to learn swim technique that is really only useful when
you are trying to maximize your speed very slightly over a very small distance
to the extent you are willing to give up your ability to breath.

'Regular' swim strokes give you the ability to continue for large distances
and to breath while you swim...

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wodenokoto
But people have been doing recreational running for thousands of years. Are
you implying that competitive swimming is new?

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imh
God I hate these titles. It's potentially faster than dolphin kicking within
about a foot of the surface, or in very shallow water. That's all. If you're
trying to swim fast, your underwater is going to be deeper and that last foot
is about the transition anyways.

So why shouldn't this be faster than freestyle? We know that deeper than a
foot, this should be the same as dolphin kicking. That's the current mode of
underwater competition swimming, so we have a good comparison. If dolphin
kicking is faster than swimming, we'd expect to see swimmers staying
underwater until the rules say they have to surface. We see that in
backstroke, so underwater swimming must be faster than backstroke. We see some
butterfliers go to the limits too, but not all. For sprint freestyle, however,
they surface pretty much immediately, so as you could have inferred from the
clickbaity title I'm calling bullshit.

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teej
I know absolutely nothing about swimming, so forgive me if this sounds dumb,
but I don't feel like current competitive trends is evidence against this new
technique. It's very possible that top swimmers are at a local maxima.

New techniques being discovered and transforming the competitive scene has
happened at least two times in other sports - high jump and long distance
running.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_Flop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_Flop)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)#The_Youn...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_\(athlete\)#The_Young_Shuffle)

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0xCMP
The catch here is that in competitive swimming, as mentioned in the article,
FINA said that you can not go past ~15m underwater from the start or turns.
The reason was that it is faster. Since they block that from being too long
then they effectively prevent changes to the strokes from taking advantage of
that too much. So while it's faster, possibly, it's not really possible to be
used.

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teej
Thanks for helping me understand. I wonder if the popularity of new techniques
would put pressure to change the rules.

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tjbiddle
This isn't new. At all. And they even say so in the article - what a terrible
title.

This has _always_ been the fastest and best way to kick when underwater when
appropriate for the stroke (In this case - anything but breaststroke, and
ensuring you're not completely on your side if doing it during backstroke.)
There's a reason why there are markers on the lanes for how far you can go
underwater - otherwise swimmers would be underwater all the way until the next
wall.

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pge
I was disappointed (particularly given the title) not to see a comparison
against freestyle swim times. The other strokes are essentially handicapped
events - they measure how fast you can go given certain specific restrictions
on what you can do. In some cases, those restrictions didn't anticipate
underwater swimming, so that loophole was exploited (particularly in back
stroke and breast stroke, where the rules resulted in slower times than free
and fly). But for freestyle, where there are (almost) no restrictions on the
style of stroke, does this fish-style of underwater swimming provide any
advantage? I am curious if anyone is aware of a comparison.

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falcolas
The advantage is that you aren't fighting against the surface tension of the
water. The disadvantages are that you can't breathe, or use your arms.

In my (admittedly dated) experience, a good crawl stroke (what is usually used
in freestyle events) will beat the underwater dolphin kick, because the arms
create a remarkable amount of forward power.

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jivardo_nucci
The woman in the photos is wearing swim fins, which makes an enormous
difference.

Give a freestyle swimmer the same fins and (s)he'll blow the underwater
swimmer away.

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SeanLuke
In the first video, where she's winning the race against others doing
butterfly, she's not wearing swim fins so far as I can tell.

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stewbrew
Looks as if somebody was watching too much tv in the 1970/80s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Atlantis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Atlantis)

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tunesmith
I wonder if the vortices from the fish kick would interfere with the swimming
of the competitor the next lane over.

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falcolas
Yup, like birds (or planes) in formation fighting against the wingtip
vortexes.

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blang
It's really hard to find and apples to apples comparison in practice. The
fastest 50m swim on record is 20.91. The fastest underwater dolphin kick,
different from the one in the article, is 23.10 [1]. These aren't super fair
comparisons for many reasons but one major one is that the underwater has a
slower start. Probably a better comparison is world record for 50m backstroke
which is 24.04. I imagine if there were any olympic underwater race (be it
fish or dolphin kick), it could probably get close to and possibly overtake
the freestyle record, but it would probably take a few years.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EFjQDgIfKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EFjQDgIfKM)

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abecedarius
Curious why actual dolphins didn't evolve to use it. I'd guess it's some
combination of horizontal vs. vertical stroke only mattering in the top meter
of depth, and issues besides raw swim efficiency.

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mannykannot
One reason may be that cetaceans evolved from land mammals that had evolved
spine-flexing in the vertical plane as part of a galloping gait.

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pmontra
I think this is it. They should change the blueprint of their body and rotate
eyes and snorkel by 90°. A pretty major adjustment.

This also means we could teach something about swimming to dolphins :-)

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mrec
> A pretty major adjustment.

True, although flounders manage a similar 90° rotation, including migrating
one of their eyes to the opposite side of their head during their early life.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder#Eye_migration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder#Eye_migration)

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hopeless
It's fascinating, and I've always wondered about the emergence of new strokes
as we begin to understand bio- and fluid-mechanics better

That said, I can't see myself doing a 2.4km swim using this stroke :-/

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Terr_
I wonder to what extent certain strokes "sabotage" other racers, since the
individual lanes are really just markings overlaid on the same body of water.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
In summary swim like a tuna and not a dolphin by doing your underwater dolphin
kick on the side.

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firimari
I have to try this next time I'm in the pool. I already kick ass with
butterfly, so I should be able to test this theory pretty well.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
I upvoted you for being good a butterfly.

Edit: It's a hypothesis you muscle head.

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agd
I wish they had an underwater sprint in the olympics. It would be great to
really test how fast people can go in water.

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acd
I've been using a similar dolphin kick when scuba diving just for playful fun
in the water.

