Glide Is A Dirty Word
Newsflash: SS Head Coach Paul Newsome has just touched down in Sydney for the ATEC show this weekend at The Dome, Sydney Olympic Park - where Ian Thorpe and his super-smooth stroke blew the world away at the 2000 Olympics. If you're in Sydney come and meet Paul, have your stroke analysed and corrected by him in the Fastlane pool, and sit in on his seminars. See you there!
This week's post is a re-visit of our popular (and detailed) 2012 blog Overgliding, Inefficiency And The Overgliderometer :
A strict definition of gliding is to consider the time between one arm finishing a stroke finishing at the rear and the next commencing the catch at the front:
This gap between strokes is the true 'glide time' when there is no propulsion from either arm and you are truly gliding through the water.
Elite Glide Time
The interesting thing is that many elite swimmers look like they're gliding when they swim but what actually is their gap between strokes? The answer may surprise you. If we study footage frame by frame of greats such as Ian Thorpe, Rebecca Adlington, Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Alex Popov and Sun Yang, the gap between their strokes is remarkably similar: between 0.10 and 0.20 seconds (see examples here and here).
1 to 2 tenths of a second is literally less than a blink of an eye and goes to show that although these great swimmers appear to be glide down the pool this is actually an illusion brought about by the smoothness of their strokes.
Your Glide Time
So what does it feel like to swim with a 'glide time' of 0.1 to 0.2 seconds? When you swim with this timing you are hardly aware of any gap between your strokes - it feels like you are stroking smoothly and continuously from one stroke to the next without any perceptible pause at the front.
If you have added a deliberate pause-and-glide into your stroke then it's likely the gap between your strokes is at least 0.4 to 0.5 seconds:
This gap is now long enough for large inefficiencies to be developing as you start to decelerate and sink deeper into the water (creating additional drag) between strokes.
If you've tried to *really* emphasise a glide in your timing then your gap between strokes may be as long as 0.7 to 1.2 seconds (we define anything over 0.7 seconds as extreme Overgliding). Now the stroke is becoming so inefficient it's unlikely you can swim more than a few lengths without feeling exhausted and having to stop for rest:
Notice how this swimmer has sunk completely beneath the surface creating huge amounts of drag and making finding the surface to breathe extremely challenging.
Getting Very Geeky
If (like us) you love your numbers and data then you will be interested in the chart we've plotted below. This is the data from 75 swimmers of all ability levels from beginner level to Olympic champions. It includes most of the famous swimming demonstration clips on Youtube.
We plotted each swimmer's speed versus their glide time:
The remarkable thing about this data is the strength of the relationship between glide and speed. The longer the gap between strokes, the slower and less efficient the swimmer is.
Of course the real clincher for our argument against actively gliding is the circled region:
In that area would be swimmers travelling quickly and efficiently but with a significant glide in their strokes. But there aren't any. None. These swimmers simply don't exist.
Glide Is A Dirty Word?
When we wrote the Swim Types website in 2010, we described 'Glide As A Dirty Word'. Perhaps unsurprisingly we copped a bit of flack from old-school swim coaches for making that statement but perceptions in the swimming world have shifted hugely over the last five years and now our argument stands largely unchallenged.
Glide is a term that has been used by well meaning swim coaches since the 1980s to encourage swimmers to lengthen out their strokes. However the reality is that when asked to glide down the pool swimmers overly lengthen their strokes by adding an intentional pause-and-glide at the front.
As we have seen this dead-spot is very inefficient and once ingrained it is very hard to remove from the stroke timing. It also causes other significant flaws in the stroke to develop:
- Putting on the brakes
- The overglider kickstart
Far better that we explain to swimmers that the goal isn't to make the stroke as long as possible (elite swimmers don't). And better to avoid the word 'glide' because it too easily introduces a deliberate pause. Let's talk about 'range' or 'extension' in the stroke but not 'glide' - swimmers will be much much better off for it.
Swim Smooth!
[After the original blog a few fellow swim geeks asked us why we plotted the data against glide time, not percentage of the stroke cycle. Time is a more meaningful analysis because deceleration (and so the impact on speed/efficiency) is dv/dt not dv/d-cycle.]
This week's post is a re-visit of our popular (and detailed) 2012 blog Overgliding, Inefficiency And The Overgliderometer :
Glide Is A Dirty Word
Many well meaning swimmers and coaches talk about the benefit of 'gliding' through the water when swimming but have you ever thought what it actually means to glide?A strict definition of gliding is to consider the time between one arm finishing a stroke finishing at the rear and the next commencing the catch at the front:
This gap between strokes is the true 'glide time' when there is no propulsion from either arm and you are truly gliding through the water.
Elite Glide Time
The interesting thing is that many elite swimmers look like they're gliding when they swim but what actually is their gap between strokes? The answer may surprise you. If we study footage frame by frame of greats such as Ian Thorpe, Rebecca Adlington, Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Alex Popov and Sun Yang, the gap between their strokes is remarkably similar: between 0.10 and 0.20 seconds (see examples here and here).
1 to 2 tenths of a second is literally less than a blink of an eye and goes to show that although these great swimmers appear to be glide down the pool this is actually an illusion brought about by the smoothness of their strokes.
Your Glide Time
So what does it feel like to swim with a 'glide time' of 0.1 to 0.2 seconds? When you swim with this timing you are hardly aware of any gap between your strokes - it feels like you are stroking smoothly and continuously from one stroke to the next without any perceptible pause at the front.
If you have added a deliberate pause-and-glide into your stroke then it's likely the gap between your strokes is at least 0.4 to 0.5 seconds:
 |
| Classic Overglider: Glide time 0.45 sec, swimming speed speed 1:42 /100m |
If you've tried to *really* emphasise a glide in your timing then your gap between strokes may be as long as 0.7 to 1.2 seconds (we define anything over 0.7 seconds as extreme Overgliding). Now the stroke is becoming so inefficient it's unlikely you can swim more than a few lengths without feeling exhausted and having to stop for rest:
 |
| Extreme Overglider: Glide time 0.84 sec, speed 2:56 /100m |
Getting Very Geeky
If (like us) you love your numbers and data then you will be interested in the chart we've plotted below. This is the data from 75 swimmers of all ability levels from beginner level to Olympic champions. It includes most of the famous swimming demonstration clips on Youtube.
We plotted each swimmer's speed versus their glide time:
The remarkable thing about this data is the strength of the relationship between glide and speed. The longer the gap between strokes, the slower and less efficient the swimmer is.
Of course the real clincher for our argument against actively gliding is the circled region:
In that area would be swimmers travelling quickly and efficiently but with a significant glide in their strokes. But there aren't any. None. These swimmers simply don't exist.
Glide Is A Dirty Word?
When we wrote the Swim Types website in 2010, we described 'Glide As A Dirty Word'. Perhaps unsurprisingly we copped a bit of flack from old-school swim coaches for making that statement but perceptions in the swimming world have shifted hugely over the last five years and now our argument stands largely unchallenged.
Glide is a term that has been used by well meaning swim coaches since the 1980s to encourage swimmers to lengthen out their strokes. However the reality is that when asked to glide down the pool swimmers overly lengthen their strokes by adding an intentional pause-and-glide at the front.
As we have seen this dead-spot is very inefficient and once ingrained it is very hard to remove from the stroke timing. It also causes other significant flaws in the stroke to develop:
- Putting on the brakes
- The overglider kickstart
Far better that we explain to swimmers that the goal isn't to make the stroke as long as possible (elite swimmers don't). And better to avoid the word 'glide' because it too easily introduces a deliberate pause. Let's talk about 'range' or 'extension' in the stroke but not 'glide' - swimmers will be much much better off for it.
Swim Smooth!
[After the original blog a few fellow swim geeks asked us why we plotted the data against glide time, not percentage of the stroke cycle. Time is a more meaningful analysis because deceleration (and so the impact on speed/efficiency) is dv/dt not dv/d-cycle.]