The fish kick may be the fastest subsurface swim stroke yet (2015)

Amazing! This is about the dolphin kick performed on its side, rechristened “the fish kick.” I couldn’t fathom (ha) why the same kick rotated 90 degrees could be faster but it turns out that the kicking motion is constrained by the motion of the water around it. In the dolphin kick, the water moves up and down and is limited by the water’s surface and pool’s bottom. The swimmer frees themself of these constraints by turning on their side.

I thought the comparison to running was interesting. As an almost exclusively terrestrial mammal, there is a very natural way for us to run. No one is going to discover than running on our arms and legs is faster, or something other than ”unnatural” way of running is faster.

But that’s not really the case with swimming. We didn’t evolve a natural swimming instinct or form for speed.

When I learned that (nearly?) all terrestrial mammals can swim to some degree (even ones that look like they shouldn’t be able to - like ungulates), I was a bit surprised, but it’s not too surprising upon reflection. But that got me thinking then: what is the best terrestrial mammalian body plan that also happens to be good for swimming? What terrestrial mammal would also be fast swimmers if they could learn and train for it as humans do? Maybe my thinking is clouded by anthrocentrism, but the human body plan which is good for bipedal running also seems to work out pretty well for swimming.

Of course, top human swimming speeds are pretty terrible compared to human running speeds and the swimming speed of basically any other aquatic animal, but we’re not made for it!

I must be way above the median age here if I'm the first to mention how much this looks like what when I was a teenager we called the "Man from Atlantis" stroke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Atlantis

> I reach out to Misty Hyman, who won gold in the 2000 Olympics...

Her name always makes me laugh because I then think about her brother's name: Buster.

Personally I think finswimming is the way to make up for humans being land animals. Fins can extend the range I can swim at least 20x to what I can do without them.

Really would love to see a true freestyle category — with the 15m rule removed. I'm curious why it's not a thing.

Very cool. Should probably have a (2015) though.

Reminds me of the fascinating efficiency of fish, where even a dead fish can swim upstream, given the right kind of vortices.

I wonder how much potential for improvement there still is for the human body.

https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2018/07/when-i-was-a-child-my-fa...

Dumb q, never learned to swim and don't understand the sport contextually.

Given:

"Some especially strong underwater swimmers stayed submerged almost the entire length of the pool, since there was no rule against it. That all changed in 1998, when FINA, the world governing body of competitive swimming, ruled that swimmers performing the backstroke had to surface after 15 meters."

This is used to explain a conclusion used throughout the rest of the article, namely, the dolphin/fish strokes aren't useful in competitive swimming because people using them have to surface.

But I don't understand: the rule says swimmers performing the backstroke have to surface, and when I look up backstroke, it is someone laying on their back? Which doesn't sound like either of these

(2015 article)

I get that it's a quirk of the sport's history, but it's funny and dumb that swimming awards medals and records for being the fastest at a slower stroke. It's like if track meets would have a 100m sprint, a 100m skip, and a 100m run-backwards.

If I could change things in the world, I wouldn't eliminate the extraneous strokes in swimming, but I would include additional competitions in all the track distances: backwards running, handstand walk, and one-legged hopping.

Hmm, divers have known the dolphin kick for years (decades?) as a way to move underwater at speed, but you’re rarely near the surface or the bottom to have effects from the surface interfaces. Interesting.