Turns - Underwater Dolphin

How important is that fifth stroke in swimming?  Did you even know that there is a fifth stroke in swimming?  Well guys as we have talked there is a fifth stroke and in a short course pool it provides a big advantage since there are a lot of turns in your events, and as we have emphasized in your training the fastest time you are moving in your race is when you come off those walls.  What we have been doing especially over the last month or so is maintaining that speed off the walls as long as you can.  Yes there are those of you who can go a long way, but Are you maintaining your speed. Or are you one of the ones with a great long streamline of the wall but no speed.

What we have been attempting to do during practice is move from how many kicks we take, and think more in terms of a tight streamline with dolphins for 4-5 seconds.  How far can you get in that 4-5 seconds while maintaining your speed.  Over the last few weeks a lot of you have really bought into this philosophy and have done a great job trying to incorporate this into your swimming. Some of us are having trouble accepting that the benefits from using this in your races far outweigh the negatives.  Reasons for this could be many such as

• just not important enough
• not enough air
• I'm tired
• it hurts

Those are just excuses and we submit to you are just a way of taking the easy way out and not going outside of your comfort zone during workouts or your races.  During the IMX meet we had the opportunity to time most of our underwater time off the walls in the 400 IM and with their permission are allowed to share this with the rest of you as a visual learning aid.  These swimmers were allowed to actually see how long they were underwater at each wall for each stroke.  They were able to compare their underwater time with how they actually felt while performing their underwater's during the race.


As you read this graph the start and each wall is on the left followed by each swimmers split for that 50.  Each swimmer was asked to find an easy speed for the 100 fly and then to really try to push the backside of each of the other 100's as they transition from stroke to stroke.  The highlighted numbers are for the breaststroke leg of the race (notice a difference), and finally the circle number is the total amount of time spent underwater during the race.  For those of you into Math Emerson spent 16% of the race underwater, and Caroline spent 18% of her  race underwater.

It's your choice but I would think it is an area that I would really want to improve during practice in order to improve my races.  WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO CHOOSE!!

EMERSON.                PARKER.                   AVA                            KITTY
4.8/3.7  31.32/35.8.     2.8/2.7  32.04/38.8.    2.4/2.3  31.2/36.3.     3.8/2.3.   30.8/35.9
2.8/2.5  39.32/37.9.     2.9/2.8  38.4/37.1       2.4/2.2. 37.9/37.2.     2.8/2.2.   38.9/38.8
2.7/2.4  41.31/41.13.   2.0/1.6. 42.9/44.02.     2.5/2.1  45.9/46.0.    2.9/2.1.   44.7/45.2
2.2/2.2  35.21/34.31    2.1/1.9  34.7/33.8        2.0/2.1  32.8/32.3.    2.1/1.5.   35.1/33.3
4.8/4.4                         4.0/3.7                          3.6/4.0.                    4.0/4.1
4.5/4.5                         3.9/3.3                          4.0/3.9                     3.6/3.3
2.8/2.0                         1.6/1.5                          2.1/1.8                     2.1/2.0
1.9/1.8                         1.5/1.6                          2.0/1.8.                    1.6/1.4
49.5                             39.9                              41.1                          37.2



CAROLINE                   KENDALL
3.7/3.1.  32.3/36.1          2.6/2.7.   32.2/36.1
2.9/2.9.  38.8/38.2          2.2/2.3.   39.3/38.8
2.9/2.7.  45.1/44.6          2.6/2.4.   45.1/44.6
2.6/2.5.  33.4/32.5          1.8/1.9.   33.4/32.5
5.8/5.6                            4.0/3.9
5.8/5.4                            3.7/3.8
1.9/2.0                            1.9/1.4
2.0/1.9                            1.6/1.4
53.8                                40.2