One of the great thing about the triathlon community is all the great people you meet. Paul at F2R is one of those people, and has decided to share this great article with you guys!

What Is The Ultimate Freestyle Stroke?

This has been a lifelong pursuit. It must’ve been around the year 1975, I saw on the cover of Swimming World a picture of a guy in a pool and the caption read “fastest man in a swimsuit.” Since that day I have been swimming, training, reading, talking, teaching, videotaping, coaching and lecturing on what it would take to have the stroke that would win a person that title. I wouldn’t call myself a fanatic, just passionate.

The other day my wife, who is a physical therapist and also a swimmer, brought to my attention that we haven’t done a lecture on the biomechanics of swimming in a long time. Then she made a comment there is a big change in freestyle and coaches are now only teaching front quadrant swimming. I had to laugh because she made it sound as if nothing else in the stroke mattered. Of course she knows this isn’t true, but it sounded as if since the last time I combed the internet researching swimming, the laws of physics have changed and the human body has evolved into a more fish-like structure. You would think something like this would at the very least make the news. I guess I missed it.

The good news is she stoked my smoldering fire enough to tap the old noggin and share some light on the almost mystical quest for the ultimate freestyle stroke. There is a not-so-small niche of people who strongly desire to swim freestyle faster and at the very least more effectively. I have witnessed those I refer to as “swimmers with great potential,” hoping to improve, pay large amounts of money to instructors who tend to mystify the stroke and sometimes turn the teaching into a near fanatical religious pursuit. So I want to do what I have been meaning to do for a long time. I am going to write a series of essays, all defining elements of what I believe make the ultimate freestyle stroke. Oh, and it’s free of charge you just have to suffer through my writings at the cost of time.

Where do I begin? The first question: what makes a swimmer the fastest swimmer in a swimsuit? Genetics plays a major role, but genetics is certainly not the end of the story. Technique is huge, I mean huge, but not everything and certainly not as simple as “if I do it right I will swim faster.” There is a mystery to doing it right because doing it right involves a chain of elements that cannot be simplified into the new and latest fad of teaching fast swimming. As an instructor or coach, the very first thing I look at is the body position of the swimmer. So my first essay/article is body balance and from there I will continue with more elements and hopefully the process will demystify freestyle. I am sure I will contradict some instructor or coach who has packaged the technique into an ideology that states any other way of teaching is wrong. I’m at peace with that and when it comes to swimming I certainly don’t think I walk on water. I have been around the pool deck to know there are many ways to teach and say the same thing. I just happen to believe my way is effective. Oh, and this is not my own knowledge but integrates a collective collaboration of wisdom from coaches who have thought much longer and harder than I have on the subject. I am just excited to share my understanding as I see it works.

I hope you enjoy and if you would like to ask or discuss any of the ideas in more detail feel free to drop me an e-mail at Paul@f2r.com.

© 2007 Paul Lundgren of F2R - Manufacturer of Triathlon Wetsuits
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