Slashdot Mirror
The US Swim Team's Secret Weapon, Science
Hugh Pickens writes "When American Swimmer Margaret Hoelzer goes for the gold tonight in the 200-meter backstroke, part of her success will be due to a new system developed by Tim Wei, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, that uses fluid dynamics to study human movement allowing scientists and coaches to study how fast and hard a swimmer pushes the water as he moves through it. 'Wei uses a tracking technique called digital particle image velocimetry, commonly used to measure the flow of small particles around an airplane or small fish or crustaceans in water.' Wei filtered compressed air in a scuba tank through a porous hose to create bubbles about a tenth of a millimeter in diameter. When an athlete swims through a sheet of bubbles that rises from the pool floor, a camera captures their flow around the swimmer's body and the images show the direction and speed of the bubbles, which Wei then translates into the swimmer's thrust using software that he wrote."
It's not just better technique and the new suit. The pool is also designed to reduce waves to help lower times. A lot of the wave dissipation features described in the article have been used in tow tanks (where we tow model ships to measure their drag) for decades.
I have much more power than any of the girls, well most of them, on the US Team, but in the water, they'll blow my doors off because of better technique - the ability to apply their power in the water. That's the best I can do. It's been a while since I read my swim coaching stuff.
For example, the rowing team was sent to go train in Tibet because there it is at a high altitude. At high altitudes there is less oxygen so it trains the athletes' body to use oxygen more effectively.
Yet another item that's been known forever. That's nothing more than fluff. US Swimming's Olympic Training Center for swimming is located isn't located in Colorado Springs because it's an exciting town you know. I swam there for a few days before HS Nationals in 1997 before the meet which took place at the Air Force Academy. They were trying to get us prepped for swimming at altitude because, as the words placed in tiles on the wall said something like, "7,258 feet -- the air is rare"
I learned many of the underwater techniques used by the current greats which were developed while I was at the peak of my performance in HS. It wasn't Michael Phelps or this new scientist suddenly creating the underwater dolphin work you see now. In the mid 1990s (into the late 1990s when it was limited to 15m) you could go as far as you wanted underwater for every event (backstroke fell first to 15m and then the rest soon followed). Misty Hyman was one of the pioneers along with Denis Pankratov and they turned on their sides (much like Coughlin still does) to take the best advantage of the swirls of water that are created as you move through it.
As I posted above, this is all not new technology and it's not worth even talking about now 10-15 years after it was developed.