The Pose Method of Triathlon Techniques

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"I met Dr. Romanov in 1996 at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where he presented a workshop on the biomechanics of running. I was quite impressed by the logical simplicity of his concepts. I have since incorporated his teaching methods into the refinement of my clients skills and with excellent results. (I coach elite endurance athletes.) I have also relied on him for the development of a chapter on running skills in a book Im currently writing (The Triathletes Training Bible). His technique concepts are on the cutting edge of biomechanics and have the potential to dramatically change how running is taught."

Joe Friel, M.S. author of Triathletes Training Bible Former Chairman of USAT National Coaching Committee

tRUth And mythS ABoUt the eSSence oF SwImmIng

chapteR 41

ith all we know about the world today from aviation and rocket science to bigbang theories and brain surgery, it may come as a surprise to hear that there is no scientific consensus about how human bodies move through water. We may know a considerable amount about the shapes of hulls for everything from ocean liners to surfboards and we may have studied the movements of fish for centuries, but on the exact topic of what causes the propulsive force that moves a fish or a human through water, the debate still lingers. Before we dive into the deep end and begin working our way through the drills that will serve as the basis for your transition to the Pose Method of Swimming, we first want to take a look at some of the long held misunderstandings concerning propulsive movement in water. Conventional academic swimming instruction varies and different theories abound as to what makes for good swimming technique. The swim coaching community can always work up a good debate on the matter of proper technique, as summarized by

Brent Rushall who concluded that the debate over propulsion still simmers (1). The Role of Natural Selection In the absence of any consensus, it can be argued that the best swimmers rise to the top not because of great coaching, but because of natural selection. When you think about the chain of development in young swimmers, this makes a lot of sense. It is widely considered an element of good parenting to drownproof children at a very young age, so most kids get their introduction to the water from parents or elementary learntoswim classes. The emphasis is not on technique as much as it is keeping the head above water. Once the child is considered safe in the water that may be the end of training for a lifetime. However, those who show an unusual aptitude may be asked to join a local club team, sometimes as early as six years of age. Here, the coaching may be done by the pool lifeguard, typically a high school or college swimmer, and the emphasis is more than likely on workouts and not instruction.

60 | thePosemethodoFtriAthlontechniques As the most talented swimmers work their way up through the ranks, they may never run into a coach who actually makes substantive technique adjustments based on superior knowledge of propulsive forces and mechanics in swimming. How far can a swimmer go on natural talent? Consider the case of Mark Spitz, who racked up an amazing nine Olympic swimming gold medals. Spitz came up through some of the best swimming programs in the country, culminating in a college career at the thendominant Indiana University where he came under the tutelage of the legendary coach, Dr. James Counsilman. Counsilman (2) once asked Spitz to describe exactly what he did when he swam the freestyle stroke. Spitz responded with a detailed description of how he pulled with a straight arm in a straight path from the point where his hand entered the water until it went behind him. It was a fascinating description and utterly wrong. In fact, he pulled not with a straight arm, but with a 90 degree bend in the arm and the path that his arm took was not straight, but a marked scurve. Despite having access to the best programs and the best coaches, Mark Spitz was in every sense a natural talent who swam based on feel and not by the precise molding of his technique. But just because natural selection wasnt on your side when it came to the swimming gene doesnt mean you cant become an excellent swimmer if you understand the basics of human movement in water and use that understanding to improve your technique. The Lift and Drag Theories The hand movement through water is traditionally referred to as sculling and most basic explanations for this action have revolved around two competing theories: Lift and Drag (3). The Lift theory holds that good swimmers use sculling actions with their hands pitched to utilize lift forces as a dominant means of propulsion. Similar to the aviation principles that permit aircraft heavier than air to fly, the Lift theory holds that, in accordance with Bernoullis Principle, there is a relative difference in the pressure created by water flowing across the more or less curved surfaces of the body (4, 5). When it was developed, Lift theory described a specific curved path of the hand during the pull phase, with the hand held at a slight angle between the plane of the hand and its line of motion. This so called sweep of the hand created pressure on the underside of the hand, creating the lift that propelled the swimmer forward. This theory, which quickly became universally accepted among coaches and scientists, concluded that there was less energy waste when force is generated by lift than by drag (6). While the Lift theory was given credence in the 1970s, subsequent research supported reverting back to Drag as the dominant propulsive force in freestyle swimming (1, 7, 8). Simply put, drag is the force created by pulling the arm straight back through the water, much as Mark Spitz described his own stroke. Other studies (1, 8) demonstrated that the hand path of swimmers was not as curved as it was thought, a conclusion that supported drag over lift as the dominant propulsive force. According to these studies, the path taken by the hands of elite swimmers is not deliberate and swimmers are actually reducing the curve and this is another strong indirect evidence that swimmers rely on drag forces rather than lift forces (3). When you think about it, it may be the case that Mark Spitz, in a subconscious effort to favor drag over lift, may have perceived that he was pulling straight back, because he was more successful than other swimmers

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in minimizing the natural curved path taken by a swimmers hand when pulling back through the water. Even though the reality was that his hand was in fact describing a curved path, to him it felt straight because his muscular efforts had a straightening effect on his hand path. But of course, the debate over the source of propulsion doesnt stop there. As soon as research was published holding that drag made a larger contribution than lift throughout the propulsive part of the pull and came to the conclusion that the commonly held belief that it is dominated by lift may be illfounded and incorrect (3), new theories were offered. The Vortex Theory Instead of belabouring the lift versus drag argument, a new theorist maintained, we need to move on and learn more about the way water reacts when we swim (10). Efficient swimmers were observed to leave minitornadoes of circulating water (vortices) in their wake with axes of rotation perpendicular to the direction of travel. Cecil Colwin (11) explained that a vortex forms as a reaction to the propulsive impulses generated by the swimmer. Here we might add that it is a simple matter to observe the same vortices by efficiently paddling a canoe or kayak and watching the spiraling funnels of water trail off the paddle at the end of the stroke. Raul Arellano (12) then added that these flow formations carry a certain amount of momentum that is transferred from the swimmers body to the water. The vortex theory came to be seen as a means of explaining how lift forces can play a major role in swimming propulsion. The next observation came from Carla McCabe and Ross Sanders (13) who noted that much of the knowledge about vortices had come from research of marine animals shedding vortices in their wake as they swim.

The vortices are continually created and shed in pulses as a fish travels through the water, specifically as the fish changes its direction, the angle of its tail, or its body alignment. Further research determined (14) that the backward momentum of the vortex rings corresponds to the forward momentum gained by the fish. Interestingly, according to the vortex theory the stroke of the swimmer is complete when the vortex is shed, as this event indicates the end of each propulsive impulse, within a swimming stroke in a particular direction (11). Thus the swimmers actions move water, thereby transferring kinetic energy to it. As a reaction, the swimmer recaptures this energy from their own vortex, which is essentially their propulsive force that thrusts them forwards in the water. In other words, the movements made by the swimmer are directly connected to the movements of the water. Thus when the swimmer moves their limbs in the water, it will directly act back upon the swimmer almost instantaneously (13). So, was vortex theory the final answer? If so, what did it tell us about how to move in the water to be an efficient swimmer? Nothing really. The problem is that it is difficult to craft a perfect swimming stroke based solely on the vortex theory. There are challenges related to correct timing in changing direction of the stroke, in holding the hand too rigidly, and in excessive acceleration and application of force (11, 12). The recommendation (15) was not to push vortex in a paddle action, but use it to control the energy, not spending it and not to execute the movements too forcefully. Nevertheless (13) the main problem with the vortex theory is that it has never really been tested to show that these vortices in the water are associated with propulsive impulses and should thus be treated with caution.

6 | thePosemethodoFtriAthlontechniques And all of these cautionary notes ignore the obvious: a swimmer cant see his or her own vortices as they are created, making it rather difficult to finetune their creation. You can almost here a coach try to explain it to an exasperated swimmer, You looked pretty good on that last repeat, but I think the flow of your vortex from the left hand is a little bit off. Yeah, that would be a little tough to coach. Axial Flow Of course, in one of the same studies (13) reviewing swimming propulsion, yet another mechanism of propulsion was put forward. This propulsion from axial flow was proposed by H. Toussaint (16) who called it pumped up propulsion. Toussaints original concept was based on the idea that the rotation of the arm around the shoulder creates a fluid velocity gradient along the arm with higher velocity near the hand than near the elbow. Briefly summarized (13), Toussaints theory illustrates that a rotating arm during the outsweep acts as a pump, driving water along the trailing side of the arm toward the hand, increasing the pressure difference and consequently propulsion. But of course (and you knew this was coming) the same summary concludes the implications of the pumped up propulsion concept for teaching and performance development are somewhat unclear at the present time (13). So, despite all the research, study and theories, its really not possible to make a definitive conclusion as to which is the dominant force of propulsion in swimming. In fact, it is conceptually possible to conclude that the various forces are all in play and they work together in a cohesive system that yields the best results for the best swimmers which somewhat brings us back to the natural selection theory. The fact is that swimmers swim and most of them do so with no real knowledge about how they do it. To return to the Mark Spitz paradox, his coach, the legendary Dr. Counsilman, simply ventured that Spitz had an innate talent in movement absent from most normal people, who themselves would have learn that which came naturally to Spitz. While thats nice for the Mark Spitz of the world, of whom there are obviously very few, but that yields no enlightenment for the rest of us who are not privileged or gifted by nature. Which leaves us with the central question of how we are supposed to do the swimming stroke still unanswered. Lots of theories, lots of inspired science, but still a paucity of practical advice. Back to Square One So were still at square one. How are we supposed to take all this sophisticated knowledge of hydrodynamic science with theoretically optimum hand angles of the hand relative to the body and the fluid medium, the theories of lift and drag, of vortex and axial flow and translate them to improved swimming? Will we really ever be able to control all these angles, curves, vortex and execute them during an exercise where there is virtually no feedback and no ability to even see where the arm is moving or the resultant flows and vortices? How can we normal people do all this if even supremelytalented athletes like Mark Spitz have very little knowledge about how they themselves do it? Taking the long view of the evolution of swimming, we have to admit that the development of the swimming stroke happened despite specific knowledge of exactly what constituted a perfect stroke. The best swimmers swim with ideas about what is the best stroke, but without an ironclad, proven formula to follow. So the question is

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this: what guides the best swimmers that elude the rest? One school of thought recommends, Swimmers should be encouraged to feel pressure and differential pressure through the pressure sensitive cells and kinesthetic proprioceptive system. By doing so, the swimmer becomes better at controlling the direction of resultant force as their ability to feel difference between pushing water and applying effective force is increased (13). While there is much wisdom in that concept, again we have to consider the practicality of a coach on the deck exhorting his or her charges, on this next set, I really want you to engage your kinesthetic proprioceptive system to gauge and optimize the differential pressure on your hands. Feeling, Another Way of Saying Perception Okay, so thats pushing it a little bit, but it really comes back to the ageold tactic of coaches telling their swimmers to develop a feel for the water. So we have a very complex objective that of propelling a human body through water and that boils down to a very simple instruction: feel the water. The tool we bring to this task is our perception of movement. A perception is clearly higher in talented individuals (i.e. Mark Spitz et al) and lower in average people. Just as important as having innate perceptive ability is the knowledge of what it is that we are supposed to be feeling. Its a little bit farfetched to go to the advanced physics level and tell a swimmer to try and control differential pressures on the surface of the hand, but it is relatively simple to instruct the swimmer to develop a feel for SUPPORT. In previous chapters of this book (The Perception Concept, The Support Concept) we

discussed our perception of body weight, its relation to support, and how it all relates to the involvement of our muscles in movement. Exactly the same logic is applied to the swimming. To dive into this discussion, lets start with a couple of seemingly silly questions. First, how do fish swim without knowing anything about science of hydrodynamics? Too much for you? Okay, what about children who start to swim before they have learned to walk and talk? Do either fish or children study swimming technique? While they seem to be silly questions, they serve to stress a most important point. And what is about elite swimmers? What are the factors that determine who remains merely a good swimmer and who rises to the elite level? If the best swimmers dont even know how they do it, there can only be one answer PERCEPTION! Perception of the support, perception of body weight and perception of alternating support. The laws of hydrodynamic forces manifest themselves to us as our perceptions. Those athletes who recognize, react to and use their heightened perceptions are the ones who will be most successful. Whether were talking about unschooled children trying to stay afloat or highly trained elite swimmers trying to achieve a perfect swimming stroke, everyone uses perception on a subconscious level no matter what they are thinking about as they swim. Doing by perception and thinking about swimming theories are just two different, unrelated activities until we create a platform that allows us to successfully apply perception to theory and achieve a technique of skillful movement. What The Theories Ignore No matter how you study all the various theories of propulsion, drag, lift, vortices or axial flow, you see that all ignore the concepts of BODY WEIGHT, SUPPORT and

64 | thePosemethodoFtriAthlontechniques CHANGE of SUPPORT, the basic principles that permit our bodies to move. Learning to move as efficiently as possible whether on land or in the water requires a sound understanding and perception of the concept of Support. Support and its perception is what allow us to apply our body weight and muscular efforts to movement. In the context of swimming, perhaps the most important factor to consider is this: where is the support and how do we feel it? Because water is by definition more fluid than land, the essence of support is more elusive or even deceptive. Very often it is unclear what is moving relative to what, and this has tremendous relevance in terms of propulsion. For example, it is very important to keep in mind that in the water, the hand acts as support for the body. We should focus on the concept that the body (shoulders, trunk, legs, etc.) moves relative to the hand. This goes against traditional swimming instruction, where you are taught to pull the hand past the body down to the hips. This creates a mental image of the hand moving relative to the body instead of the body moving relative to the hand. If the hand is moving, it cannot function as support for the body but the opposite, which is the body being a support for the hand, immediately making all movement dramatically different. To complicate things even further, even when we have support with our hand for the body, and are moving the body with the hand, the important thing is where the body is moving. Conventional thinking says that it is moving forward, but in reality having our hand in front of us we actually have two components (vertical and horizontal) of the vector moving the body both forward and up. As we develop our swimming technique, we have to follow this logic of moving in two directions and keep it foremost in our muscular efforts, thoughts and focus. Realizing that our forward progress as measured in the horizontal plane is a byproduct of these two vectors of movement. This is a classic vector relationship. While providing support, the hand never stays in the same place it goes under the body as the body moves upward and forward according to the resultant vector and its components (Fig.41.1), which themselves are constantly changing. Fig. 41.1. Swimmers diagram of vectors Additionally, the water provides the support for the whole body, while the body slides through the water, rising up and falling down and actually going from one side to the other falling down from one support to the other. This complex movement ultimately manifests as forward movement of the body. Learning how to apply your perception of your movements in the water as you apply your body weight to support will be the key to improving your swimming. References:
1. Rushall, Sprigings, Holt, and Cappaert. a reevaluation of forces in swimming. Journal of Swimming Research. Vol. 10, 1994, pp. 630. 2. Counsilman, James E. Competitive swimming Manual for Coaches and swimmers. Counsilman CO., Inc. Bloomington, IN, 1977. 3. Sanders, Ross lift or Drag? lets Get skeptical about freestyle Propulsion. <http://sportsci.org/news/biomech/skeptic.html> May 1998. 4. Brown, R.M., and Counsilman, J.E. The role of lift in propelling swimmers. In Biomechanics, Editor J.M. Cooper, Chicago, IL: Athletic Institute. 1971 pp. 179188.

truthAndmythsABouttheessenceoFswimming | 65 5. Counsilman, J.E. The application of bernoulliis principle to Human Propulsion in Water. In First International Symposium on Biomechanics of Swimming. Editor L. Lewillie, and J. Clarys, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 1971, pp. 5971. 6. Toussaint, H.M., and P.J. Beek. biomechanics of competitive front crawl swimming. Sports Medicine, Vol. 13, 1992, pp. 824. 7. Holt, L.E., and J.B. Holt. swimming velocity with and without lift forces. Unpublished paper, Sports Science Laboratory, Dalhousie University, Canada, 1989. 8. Valiant, Holt, and Alexander. The contributions of lift and drag components of the arm/forearm to a swimmers propulsion. In Biomechanics in Sports: Proceedings of the International Symposium of Biomechanics in Sports. J. Terauds, Editor. Research Center for Sports, Del Mar, CA. 1982. 9. Cappaert, J. 1992 olympic Report. limited circulation communication to all fIna federations. United States Swimming, Colorado Springs, CO. 1993. 10. Sanders, R.H. extending the schleihauf model for estimating forces produced by a swimmers hand. In B.O. Eriksson and L. Gullstrand Proceedings of the XII FINA World Congress on Sports Medicine. Goteborg, Sweden, Apr. 1997, pp. 421428. 11. Colwin, C.M. Breakthrough Swimming. Human Kinetics. 2002. 12. Arellano, Pardillo, and Gaviln, Underwater undulatory swimming: kinematic characteristics, vortex generation and application during the start, turn and swimming strokes. Universidad de Granada: ISBS 2002. 13. McCabe, C., and R. Sanders. Propulsion in swimming. <http://www.coachesinfo. com/category/swimming/323> July 2005. 14. Mller, Heuvel, Van Den, Stamhuis, and Videler. fish foot prints: morphology and energetics of the wake behind a continuously swimming mullet (Chelo labrosus risso). The Journal of Experimental Biology, Vol. 200, 1997, pp. 28932906). 15. Ungerechts, Persyn, and Colman. Application of vortex flow formation to selfpropulsion in water. In Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming. Editors K.L. Keskinen, P. Komi, and A.P. Hollander. Vol. 8. Jyvaskla: Gummerus Printing House. 1999, pp. 95100 16. Toussaint, Berg Van den, and Beek. PumpedUp Propulsion during front crawl swimming. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 34(2), 2002, pp. 314319.