
Is This New Swim Stroke the Fastest Yet? (2015) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/is-this-new-swim-stroke-the-fastest-yet-rp
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nbartlomiej
The title of this post would be better with a [2015] tag. Also, previous
discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9785004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9785004)

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sandworm101
Nothing new here. This has been well-known for decades. That's why there are
rules against underwater swimming. It isn't so much that it is unfair, but
that having an event turn on who can hold their breath the longest could lead
swimming down a very unhealthy path.

There are many tricks. I don't claim to understand the physics, but dolphin-
kicking very near the bottom and/or wall of a pool is also faster. That too is
banned. And competition pools are deep enough that this effect would be
difficult to utilize.

If you want to see an interesting evolution, look at the competitive
breaststroke these days. It's migrating away from "frog" kicking towards a
butterfly-style dolphin kick, vertical rather than horizontal. In my day that
would result in a DQ, but today they let it slide.

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oska
_> having an event turn on who can hold their breath the longest could lead
swimming down a very unhealthy path._

Wouldn't necessarily mean that. You could have a rule that the swimmers must
surface every certain distance, e.g. once every 20 metres.

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sandworm101
Most pools are 25m. I see many people point to 25m pools and call them an
"Olympic-length" pools. I think TV warps perspective. Those 50m olympic pools
have much wider lanes, much thicker lane ropes, an olympic swimmers are now as
tall enough to be in the NBA (being tall is a ridiculous advantage in
swimming). An olympic swimmer (male) would struggle to do butterfly in a
normal lane. I'm no giant (5'10") but do touch both ropes sometimes at my
local pool.

So a 20m limit wouldn't be practical. Swimming is a very communal sport.
Little kids train in the same facilities as world-class athletes. FINA wants
to keep the rules as universal as possible.

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nickstefan12
People have been underwater kicking since the 80s. They changed the rules to
limit the distance one could kick underwater. Is this an old story?

Also, interesting to note that in the olympic / NCAA 50 yard and 50 meter
freestyle, a drag race, usually people are not kicking to 15m. So perhaps
underwater is only faster with effeciency in mind. With a short race like the
50 free it's possibly still not the fastest. It's similar to how fly is as
fast as free swimming at short distances. It's the inefficiency that makes fly
end up slower over a 50/100 vs freestyle.

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Teever
> They changed the rules to limit the distance one could kick underwater.

Why do they do this? I thought the point of the sport was to see who would get
across the pool under their own power and without a tool. It seems to defeat
the purpose of the competition when they include arbitrary rules like this.

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dagw
_It seems to defeat the purpose of the competition when they include arbitrary
rules like this._

All sports include arbitrary rules to try to make them more fun for both
participants and viewers. Basketball isn't just about seeing who can get a
ball through the hoop the most times, car racing isn't just about who can be
the first N times around a track etc.

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JulianMorrison
Basketball is a game, it's like chess, the move "knock the board off the table
and punch the opponent" is not part of the definition of the game, and that's
fine, games have definitions.

But honestly, it annoys me when things like swimming and car racing bind
themselves up with rules that amount to "no, do it the conventional way, not
the better way". It should be legit to win by innovation.

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Hondor
I tend to feel the same way but there are often safety reasons. You can't have
a popular sport where the winners are the ones who push themselves closest to
death.

g-forces causing harm to drivers: [https://what-
if.xkcd.com/116/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/116/)

Smaller events also have to allow the competitors to focus on a smaller range
of capabilities so they can actually find competent players. Robot and drone
competitions come to mind where the equipment is often standardized so they're
only testing skills or programming, not being-the-best-at-everything which
would end up as "throwing the most money at it".

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danans
When I was a competitive breaststroke swimmer in my high-school years I
remember that the league made the use of a supplementary dolphin kick during
the glide phase of the stroke a disqualifiable offense. I'm not sure why they
did that since it's simple enough for anyone to learn. The principle was that
you move faster underwater is the same as the one in the article.

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apor
Nowadays you are allowed to do one butterfly kick. It would of course be
faster to kick longer, but that wouldn't be breaststroke then I guess.

I think it is strange that there is no really open class where you can do
whatever you want, as long as you propel yourself unassisted.

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Gustomaximus
For their talk of physics, missing an easy to measure results table seems very
lacking when making a claim like this. Link bait?

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yodon
I'm a fairly casual amateur swimmer (who happens to have a PhD in physics,
which is surprisingly helpful if you want to reduce your drag in the pool, but
I digress). I learned this technique in 1998 or 1999 from a Yale or Harvard
swimmer home on vacation in Sierra Madre, CA. He was doing this crazy sideways
kick thing, and when I asked him about he said his coach had them doing it
because if you tried to do a pure kick version of the butterfly from a normal
face-down position you lost too much range of motion in the small of your
back. I already knew other coaches encouraged on-your-side flutter kick
practice to get more comfortable swimming on your side (most of the drag you
experience has to do with surface interactions, so rolling your body to get it
farther from the surface helps with drag, just like submarines can commonly go
faster than surface ships). I've been hooked ever since. It's surprisingly
fast, even if you're not in great shape, which is lots of fun, but it does
take a little practice to get the hang of breathing while doing it.

If you want to give it a try, my advice is to start with a kickboard for
balance in the beginning, then toss the board once you get the hang of the
position because you don't really need it and it just slows you down with
extra drag.

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fiftyacorn
The dolphin kick used to be the strategy for the shorter butterfly events.
Butterfly the first length, then dolphin kick pretty much the whole of the
next length. They changed the rules so you could only dolphin kick so far off
the glide phase

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Bromskloss
> Butterfly the first length, then dolphin kick pretty much the whole of the
> next length.

Why this division? Why not, for example, the other way around?

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fiftyacorn
A good dive will carry you through the water say 1/2 distance, then you
butterfly the rest. The return leg is a dolphin kick off a tumble turn against
the wall. The dolphin kick helps maintain the momentum

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xchaotic
How do you breathe? How do turn rounds? I guess it's doable for the last 25
meters or so, but the rest of the routine may be faster overall as it's easier
to combine with efficient turning and you know catching a breath

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js8
I wonder how this compares to freestyle? Even if it cannot be used
competitively, perhaps it could be useful in life-saving situations?

