Imagine you have a square cube of water and you want to make it smaller or more compressed. To do so would take astronomical amounts of weight to complete that task. The water at the bottom of the ocean is compressed but not really that much. The water would be as thick as pancake syrup if it was easy to compress but water is not that much "thicker" at the bottom of the ocean.
With that in mind, when you are surrounded by water, you are surrounded by dense atoms that have no "secret shortcut" to swim through. When I do a flip turn I swim on my side because it's fun and I can look down the line to see where I am on the food chain of a race.
When you are swimming on your side when doing freestyle, you do go faster since both air and water are involved.
[Reference: Link]
5 comments:
Actually, there are those who think it is faster.
Remember Misty Hyman? She dolphin kicked on her side because of a study done on dolphins said it was faster. The claim is that vorticies created by the kick stretch to the surface causing less drag. Otherwise they would stretch from side to side.
Hard to believe? It is for me.
I haven't cracked a physics book since the early 90s, but I always thought it was faster to kick on your side because you're not turning over onto your stomach as quickly and thus creating forward resistence. It's a more delayed rotation onto your stomach, propelled by the kick. Conceptually speaking, I don't see how dolphin kicking on your side, stomach, or back underwater would make a difference. Water is water when you're not on the surface.
Then why not stay on your back for the first two kicks or so and then slip over slowly? Would that work better?
[Not rhetorical questions]
i wouldn't doubt if this was true...
when you dolphin kick on your side, you're pushing against the water on the up-kick and down-kick...
when kicking on your stomach/back, you're pushing water down, but only displacing the water into the air on the up-kick.
also, think of the body as if it were a ship. do you see many boats with wide keels? no, they are tall and thin, just like the human body when turned sideways.
i think more swimmers should start dolphin kicking on their sides, though it might take some time adjusting to.
You know what, I push off on my side and it feels faster but analytically I don't see how it could be.
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