THE MECHANICS OF SWIMMING

When we enter the water and begin to swim, our bodies are subject to very different forces than
when on land. Our tendency to float, the resistance we feel when moving through water, and the
effectiveness of different swimming styles are all noticeably different than moving on land. This
resource will discuss the science behind swimming. By understanding these principles, you will
have a better grasp of why we swim the way we do and how to swim more effectively.
Understanding these principles will help you instruct your swimmers to move through the water
more efficiently. This chapter also suggests experiments you can do to illustrate these principles
for yourself, so you can be better prepared for water activities.
Recognize that not all swimmers will be able to stretch out, relax or stabilize their centre of
gravity. Keeping in mind the principles in this chapter, work with the swimmer to come up with
ways for them to move as effectively and efficiently as possible through the water. Some
considerations to keep in mind when working with swimmers with disabilities:

In order to spread their weight, a swimmer may need additional flotation devices to
achieve this.
Encourage swimmers with a physical limitation to stretch out as much as possible.
Swimmers with underdeveloped leg muscles (e.g. spina bifida, spinal cord injury) float
differently face down, bottom up. These swimmers may need assistance recovering
to a position from which to get a breath (e.g. rolling to the back may be easier than lifting
the head).
Some swimmers may never learn to put their face in the water, and thats okay. Teach
those swimmers face-out swim skills. Be mindful that a swimmer who cannot put their
face in the water, regardless of their other skills, can not be considered water safe. Plan
and supervise accordingly.

Buoyancy: Floating
Archimedes principle
states that a body in water
is buoyed up by a force
equal to the weight of the
water it displaces.

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According to Archimedes principle, something that weighs 10,000 kg needs to displace at least
10,000 kg of water in order to float. Imagine a 10,000 kg solid ball of steel. When you put it in
water, it sinks. It doesnt displace much watermuch less than the 10,000 kg of water that
would be necessary to hold it up. But if you shape that steel into a ships hull, suddenly it will
float. Thats because a ships hullwhich is much longer and wider than the ball of steelis big
enough to displace more than 10,000 kg of water.
The same principle applies to people. You can see this most easily when you lower yourself into
a bathtub and the water level goes up. Youre displacing waterArchimedes principle at work.
When the weight of the water that you displace is equal to or more than your weight, you float.
Because of buoyancy, you seem to weigh very little, if anything, in the water. That means you
can put most of your energy into moving because you use very little energy to support yourself.
This is especially valuable for persons with limited physical ability. Someone who finds it hard to
move on land or who depends on a wheelchair can get around in the water much more easily
because the buoyancy of water does most of the work.
Factors that affect your buoyancy include the following:
1. Body type. Your buoyancy depends a lot on how much muscle, fat, and bone you have.
Bone and muscle sink in water, whereas fat floats. This means that people with lots of
muscle and heavy bone structure or people without much body fat dont float as easily as
people with more body fat and less muscle.
Your body composition does change with age, though. Very young children have little
muscle and light bones, so they tend to float very easily. Young adults tend to have more
muscle and less fat, so in general they dont float very well. Older people often have more
fat and less muscle, so they tend to float more easily.
2. Lung capacity. You can float more easily by simply taking a deep breath and holding it. This
increases your volume without increasing your weight.
3. Body position. You can also float more easily by spreading your weight out across the
water surface so that theres more water to support your weight. Remember that when you
float in water, most of your body is actually below the surface, somewhat like an iceberg, not
on top of it like a beach ball. Keep your weight low in the water.

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4. Centre of mass (sometimes called your centre of gravity) and centre of buoyancy. Lets
look at these in more detail.

Your centre of mass is the point around which the weight of your body is evenly distributed.
Its usually located in your hips.
Your centre of buoyancy is the point around which the buoyant properties of your body are
evenly distributed. Its usually found in your chest area.
Every time you move in the water, your centre of mass and your centre of buoyancy move
as well. When you float, your centre of mass is below your centre of buoyancy. If your centre
of mass moves above your centre of buoyancy, you will still float, but youll be unstable.
Your body will naturally roll and shift until your centres line up. You can help your swimmers
with this by:

Assuring them the tippy sensation is natural.

Physically supporting them until they find their balance.
Encouraging them to experiment with different body positions to find the most stable
ones.
Telling them to stay relaxed and to take a deep breath to move their centre of buoyancy
down.

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Resistance: Opposing Movement

Resistance in water is often referred to as drag. There are three types of water resistance:
All these types of resistance slow you down when youre swimming, but you can do things to
reduce their effect.

Form drag is the resistance caused by the

shape of an object and its profile as it moves
through water.

Form drag

Think of the difference between a sleek,

narrow kayak slicing through the water and a
barge pushing through it. To reduce form drag,
emphasize streamlining. You can glide
through water much easier with your arms
close beside your body than with your arms
stretched out to each side.

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Wave drag is the resistance caused by water

turbulence, including the turbulence you
generate as you swim.

Wave drag

The faster you swim, the more wave drag you

create. To reduce wave drag, use a smooth,
even stroke, avoid splashing with your arms,
and reduce side-to-side and up-and-down
body motion.

Frictional drag is the resistance caused

by the texture of an objects surface as it
moves through water.

Frictional drag

To reduce frictional drag, you can wear a

bathing cap and a smooth, tight-fitting
bathing suit. Some competitive swimmers
even shave their body hair to reduce
friction.

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Propulsion: Causing Movement

How we move in water is affected by Newtons laws of motion:

The law of inertia.

The law of acceleration.
The law of action and reaction.
The law of levers.

The law of inertia is the tendency of a body at rest to stay at rest (static inertia) and of a body in
motion to stay in motion (dynamic inertia).
What does this tell us about swimming?

First, it takes more energy to start a stroke than to keep it moving.

Second, the more streamlined your body, the more you benefit from dynamic inertiain
other words, the longer youll keep moving forward.

That means its more efficient to keep moving when youre swimming than it is to stop and start
a lot. Dynamic inertia allows you to rest briefly as you keep movingthink of the glides in breast
stroke, sidestroke, and elementary back stroke. Use that rest to your advantage, but remember
not to rest too long because you may end up having to overcome static inertia (stopping) with
your next stroke! In front crawl and back crawl, the dynamic inertia is increased through an
underwater arm action that is initiated with a shoulder rotation (inward on front crawl, outward
on back crawl) and the use of a bent-arm pull to move water toward your feet. The increased
momentum (dynamic inertia) gained from this action ensures that the overwater recovery has
minimal effect on your forward movement.
The law of acceleration states that the speed of a body depends on how much force is applied
to it and the direction that force comes from.
This means that if you push off from a wall with twice as much force as someone else, you will
go twice as far. Likewise, the more force you use with each stroke, the faster you will swim.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you swim more efficiently when you move in just one
direction. If you zigzag, youre wasting energy correcting your course instead of moving forward.
The law of action and reaction is the principle that for every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction.
This means that when your arm pushes (or acts) against the water, the water pushes back (or
reacts), giving you the resistance you need to move. If you push up, you go down. Think of the
example of a feet-first surface dive: when you push your palms against the water in an upward
motion, it causes you to move in a downward motion. Likewise, if you push backwards, you
move forwards. Think of the arm action of front crawl: when you push the water toward your
toes, it causes you to move forward. In some strokes, such as elementary back stroke, breast
stroke, and sidestroke, the arms recover underwater, which makes the body move backwards
exactly the opposite of the direction you want to travel. This is a negative reaction. The same

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thing happens when you first bend your knees in whip kick. The arm recovery in front crawl and
back crawl is above water, so theres no negative reaction in the water. You can minimize
negative reaction in elementary back stroke, breast stroke, and sidestroke by making the
recovery as efficient as possible, so theres as little water resistance as possible.
The law of levers states that the product of the force and the force arm is equal to the product
of the resistance and resistance arm.

Try holding an object such as a can of tomatoes in front of you with your arm straight. Now bend
your arm and bring the can closer to your body. Its easier to hold the object with a bent arm,
right? This is the law of levers in action.
You can think of your arm as a lever that rotates around a fulcrumyour shoulder joint.
According to the law of levers, the shorter the distance between the fulcrum and the loadin
this case, between your shoulder and the can of tomatoesthe less force it takes to hold the
load.
You can demonstrate this in the water by having swimmers climb into deep water and hang onto
the edge of the pool or dock. Ask them to try to lift themselves out of the water, keeping their
arms straight. Could they do it? Now have them try again with their arms bent. The swimmer will
experience the law of levers in action.

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The same thing is true when youre swimming: you can push against the water with more force
if youre using a bent-arm pull than if youre using a straight-arm pull. Using a bent-arm pull
means you can swim faster than you could with a straight-arm pull, or you can swim at the same
speed but with less effort.

Laminar Flow: Creating Lift

Laminar flow happens when water flows around an object. Cup your hand and imagine water
flowing around it as you move it horizontally. The water that flows under your knuckles must
speed up because it has farther to travel than the water that flows over your palm. As it speeds
up, it creates a force called lift that will pull your hand towards the faster moving water. If the
water slows down as it moves around an object, it creates an opposite force called drag. In
swimming, lift helps you move forward through the water.
You can experience lift by standing in chest-deep water (or kneel in shallow water) with your
arms at your side. Now bend one elbow until your forearm is horizontal in front of you with your
palm cupped and facing up. Relax your arm muscles. You will feel some buoyancy, making your
hand drift upward.
Next, relax your elbow a little so that your forearm is horizontal in front of you, and then sweep
your hand horizontally through the water, keeping your palm cupped. You will feel your hand
pulled deeper into the water by the force of lift. Try it again a little faster. Youll feel your hand
pulled even deeper. What happens when you turn your hand upside down and repeat the
experiment?
This experiment with your hand in the water shows you that lift forces do not always act in an
upward direction. Actually, they can act in any direction. A swimming stroke is made up of many
different slicing motions, some outward and downward, some inward and upward. The lift from
all these motions combines to make a horizontal force that moves you forward when you swim.
The other thing you should know about lift is that its proportional to the speed of your motion.
You felt this when you moved your hand faster and felt the pull downward get stronger. This is
called propeller propulsion because it acts the same way as a propeller slices through the
water to push a boat forward. You use propeller propulsion when you do whip kick.

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Another kind of propulsion, called paddle propulsion, is demonstrated by oars moving a

rowboat through the water. This is another example of the law of action and reaction at work.

You use paddle propulsion when you perform the arm action of elementary back stroke. Until
recently, people thought that using paddle propulsion was the best way to swim, pulling your
body through the water with your arms and hands. However, the science of swimming has now
shown that propeller propulsion is more effective for swimming. Many strokes use both kinds of
propulsion.

Conservation of Momentum: Using Energy

Conservation of momentum is related to Newtons law of inertia. According to this principle,
circular stroke patterns are more effective than back-and-forth movements. Thats because
when you make a back-and-forth movement in the water, you first have to use force to stop
moving in one direction (overcoming dynamic inertia). Then you must use more force to start
moving again in another direction (overcoming static inertia). If you make a circular movement,
however, you dont have to stop and start, which means you dont have to overcome either
dynamic or static inertia. In other words, youre conserving momentum.
You can test this out by standing in waist-deep water and bending over until your forearm is
underwater. First, move your forearm back and forth in a straight line so that the water presses
first against the palm of your hand and then against the back of your hand. Then, make the
same motion in a circular or oval path. This circular pattern takes much less effort because you
are not starting and stopping the movement of your arm.

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You can apply this principle to the flutter kick. If you keep your ankles stiff, your kick will not be
as powerful because they will be using a back-and-forth motion. If you relax your ankles, they
will follow a more efficient rounded path at the top and bottom of the kick.

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