Skate Position During Recovery

Oops. I meant to say "increase drag" not "reduce drag".

[Tom Pamperin]

Originally Posted by John@NewPaltz

Yes, the skate position on the side is the most streamlined position. But forcefully holding it through the entire recovery bears the risk that you start compensating this rotational momentum with your feet or spearing arm or both. And this compensational effort will [increase] drag more than a slightly earlier start of rotation.

Done properly, there is nothing forceful about remaining in skate position. It's a matter of balance. In other words, as you develop good balance (and the proper balance of tension-relaxation to hold that balance), extra compensational movements are eliminated.

Also, note Coach David Shen's response--holding skate position through the entire recovery is not all about drag reduction. It's also about preserving the kinetic energy of the still unrotated body so that when rotation does happen, all of that preserved energy goes into driving the spearing arm forward, which aids rotation while reducing muscular effort.

[CoachDavidShen]

Originally Posted by John@NewPaltz

But forcefully holding it through the entire recovery bears the risk that you start compensating this rotational momentum with your feet or spearing arm or both.

This is why I emphasize Skate should be practiced and mastered by everyone! If you are forcefully holding it, I would advocate that you practice Skate so that you can hold it without so much force, nor use your feet or other body parts to keep you on the edge of your body (as noted by @Tom Pamperin)

Then, integrate this with your full stroke. As you switch from side to side, can you easily spear forward into the next Skate and do it such that your balance is perfect? Or, can you bring your recovering arm forward without its mass unbalancing you as it comes forward and slightly out to your side?

Aptly named Skate, you can also think of when you go ice skate. You push off with one foot onto the other foot's skate blade. When you do that, do you wobble? Do you collapse onto one side? When you begin ice skating, this may happen. When you get better, you get better at launching onto that blade edge without wobbling or collapsing.

It is the same concept with Skate, and when you are in Skate while you swim full stroke.

[CoachDavidShen]

Originally Posted by Rajan

During this phase I feel deceleration as you mentioned from recovery to entry forward. Can this deceleration be eliminated by being in Skate position ?

There is a natural deceleration that happens when you stop adding propulsion through the stroke back/spear forward. The idea here is to minimize this deceleration in this phase. I still have days in my practice when during my stroke, my body stops dead in the stroke cycle. I can tell by how fast the tiles move under me. If they ever stop, then my drag is so high that it has stopped me dead in the absence of propulsive elements.

There are many things you can examine to minimize deceleration:

1. Being in good Skate position means you are quiet, perfectly balanced, and not introducing extraneous motion which all minimize drag.

2. check your body parts. Are your limbs splaying outward during this time? Keep them all quiet, and within the shadow of your body moving through the water.

3. Is your head swinging from side to side as you switch? excess head movement will raise drag.

4. Is your body perfectly horizontal through all parts of the stroke? I often see swimmers change their hip depth at different times during the stroke. For example, sometimes they are horizontal and then when they reach the switch i see their hips drop. What happened? What changed? Why the hip drop here but not elsewhere? No matter what the cause, drag just increased dramatically when it was actually OK just before and stopped them dead in the water .

So in essence what you say is true. If you have an awesome Skate - all body parts in the right place, perfectly horizontal body, head down - that will help minimize drag a lot. But also don't forget that swimming is not a static thing like Skate the whole way; you're moving a lot of body parts around while some of your body is still in Skate so that movement can interrupt what was formerly a perfect Skate.

Skate is one of our most basic drills. It is much easier to practice elements broken down into pieces. Then we reassemble them into a whole, bit by bit, and challenging your CNS when it's ready. So Skate first, then we add a bit of recovery to spear for 1 stroke only. Then 2, then 3, and so on.

So stay up all te way to entry or roll towards the arm going down?

Hmmm

There seems to be a natural slight roll towards the arm going down once it passes shoulder height? if i stay up all the way to entry it feels like im doing some sort of drill ie poise before entry / sailboat drill?