Singularity

Very interesting

Nov.20, 2006, filed under Miscellany

How does she swim in those boots?While perusing the TI website I kept coming across references to ‘fistgloves’. Being a filthy, perverted sort my first inclination was to think this was rude, but no. They are a training aid to help people learn how to swim with finesse rather than brute force.

Intrigued — and not able to resist the challenge posed by the statement “Using them for the first time, you’ll feel relatively helpless for the first 5 or 10 minutes” — in today’s session I tried to emulate some of the effects by swimming with closed fists.

Now logic would dictate that, if propulsion is provided by the hands pushing water backwards, my time per length would drop dramatically by losing the larger, flat surface area of the hand. So I timed myself over a few lengths with open hands and few with closed fists.

Bugger me if it made absolutely no difference at all. I’m still horribly slow at the moment, which I’m hoping is just because I’m still not fully recovered from that chest infection and I’m tired. But I was just as slow with open hands as I was with closed fists.

Now if I can just get this pressing with the buoy thing right I might start getting somewhere. If I use a pullbuoy I can feel the improvement immediately, even though I’m not kicking, so a lot of it must be down to my legs dragging still. I’m also finding the front quadrant stroke tiring on my shoulders, but that could be from digging drainage ditches at the weekend and not having the technique right.

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