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."
After doing something for years and years, changing the way you do something, whether it's a swimming stroke or tennis or golf swing, isn't done instantly. It takes quite a bit of concerted effort and attention to change it. I'd be really interested in how and what the coach does to get the swimmers to change.
I've witnessed swimmers in college that have bad habits that they gained as youth and they can't seam to shake them.
So if I'm reading this correctly, they essentially created a measuring system for how much power a swimmer is generating in the water, serving the equivalent purpose of the power meter that is commonly used by cyclists?
swimming backstroke in high school, I always noticed that my underwater dolphin was faster than my on surface backstroke ...
I could go longer and faster underwater in backstroke than a team mate who would literally wipe the floor with me in backstroke, because his surface speed was much faster.
That and the coach would tell us "do butterfly kick underwater near the surface until you feel that you are slowing down, then come up and do crawl." when training for the front crawl (freestyle) events.
I've also seen Lenny Krayzelburg swim underwater in a 25 yard pool. The lung capacity on the olympic swimmers is something extraordinary.
Everyone is faster in the pool. I watched a race where even the 5th place finisher came in above the old world record time.
Just read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/sports/olympics/12records.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Over above whatever the swimmers are using, the pool itself is engineered to create faster times. Everything from the lane dividers, to the wall of the pool, to the extra meter of depth are meant to dissipate turbulence in the water and increase times.
I went to China for a visit this summer and there was this interesting Chinese Olympic history series playing on the TV.
Apparently after the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the Chinese considered it to be a disappointing showing because many Chinese favorites did not get a Gold medal. So the Chinese government got some experts together and they came up with a new plan for how the athletes are trained in China. They first listed several sports the Chinese were good at traditionally, like table tennis, badminton, gymnastics, etc. They then established two research facilities for each sport. The purpose of these research facilities were to find more effective methods to train an athlete.
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.
While us nerds can't exactly participate in sports competitively we definitely have the skills to improve training and playing methods of a sport =D
And his body. He's like a dolphin. His proportions are perfect for swimming. And then he's double jointed in his ankles, elbows, shoulders AND chest. His armspan is 10cm greater than his height. All he needs now are gills.
Everyone has known about this for years and I'm not quite sure why it's suddenly news now. There are plenty of pools out there that have 10+ lanes (in college we had 10+ lanes and we swam in the deep end of the pool for SCY races). It really seems like most of the discussions about the reasons for the WRs falling are more or less just to fill the time that the announcers have between events.
I realize that the general public doesn't understand how pools, suits, and training methods have evolved over the last 15 years but it's seriously not news worthy IMO. US Swimming is just trying to get people to pay attention to how cool swimming is so that they get the most out of the "Olympic Cycle". The "Olympic Cycle" is the phenomenon that occurs following every Olympic year where swim teams see a upswing in the number of youngsters trying out for swim teams because of all the coverage ("ohh, Mommy, I want to be Michael Phelps/Natalie Coughlin/Hall Jr/Krazelburg/Dolan/etc too!")
Another flash in the pan caused by mass media dumbing everything down to a mostly unaware public. Move along.
That's why you can only dolphin kick for 15 meters now.
In 25 yard pools during backstroke it was easier to dolphin kick and swim 8 yards with the last 2 dedicated to the turn.
As for swimming underwater: Most sprinters in the 50m freestyle don't take a breath during the race. In short course (25m pool) 50m races I maybe took one breath on the way back - depends how much air I released during my turn. If I swam at the right speed I could get about 75m before needing to come up and take another breath. But this was far from racing speed.
Perhaps there's a coaching aspect to it but I think if someone stays at the top of their field for a long time, it says a lot about that person's abilities. I wonder if it's simply that the best swimmers or the best golfers or the best athletes do change, and are simply very good at shaking old habits and adapting to improved techniques when they become apparent. If they don't, they're not the best any more, and are often quickly forgotten as someone else comes through and pushes them out of the way.
And how much would this technology cost in Canadian dollars?
Cause we're in the market right now.
I watched way more swimming than I should probably admit this Olympics. But I noted that all Americans performing used same tactic. Basically they swam not as fast as they could until their last pool length, where they really pushed their foot on the gas sort of. I think they do this because going fast like that works up oxygen deficit and you end up out of breath. If they swam this fast in the beginning they wouldn't keep it up, and they would even slow down. But by doing it on their last stretch they end up out of breath when they no longer need to swim since the race is over. It's a tactic that seems to have paid off very well, race after race.
Maybe, just maybe, the pool is slightly too short ?