Help / Advice needed

[Zenturtle]

Can you give a short summary of that article?

I dont know if black people have a higher density than the avarage white, but being a floater certainly makes swimming easier and also more enjoyable in general I think.
Most elite sprinter dont float very well probably, but like a half sinking speedboat with a giant outboard motor, they have a big engine to overcompensate that small handicap.
I think its allowed (is there any real proof?)to say that black people have a great talent pool of people with strength combined with a great amount of fast twitch fibers making them often superior in sprinting, boxing, gymnastics, etc.
There must be plenty talents out there that can become olympic sprint medal winners, but like tennis, most blacks usually dont grow up where swimming as a child is normal culture.
I dont know about long distance swimming. Being a sinker is a bit of a handicap there I guess.

if you are interested in your density, do the pencil float test. Inhale as much as possible and see how much of your head stays above water.
Half a head above water is avarage density.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWwRGrPquJU

My totally unscientific experience (n = about 10) with asian people in the pool is that they follow the cliche that they are committed to the task and hard working, but make for slow and slightly frustrated swimmers, doing a lot of pulling and kicking without much result.

Most of us are not hypermobile, 6.5 foot tall, built like Phelps and still enjoy swimming with all our bigger or smaller handicaps.

[Danny]

Originally Posted by Zenturtle

Can you give a short summary of that article?

I dont know if black people have a higher density than the avarage white, but being a floater certainly makes swimming easier and also more enjoyable in general I think.
Most elite sprinter dont float very well probably, but like a half sinking speedboat with a giant outboard motor, they have a big engine to overcompensate that small handicap.
I think its allowed (is there any real proof?)to say that black people have a great talent pool of people with strength combined with a great amount of fast twitch fibers making them often superior in sprinting, boxing, gymnastics, etc.
There must be plenty talents out there that can become olympic sprint medal winners, but like tennis, most blacks usually dont grow up where swimming as a child is normal culture.
I dont know about long distance swimming. Being a sinker is a bit of a handicap there I guess.

if you are interested in your density, do the pencil float test. Inhale as much as possible and see how much of your head stays above water.
Half a head above water is avarage density.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWwRGrPquJU

My totally unscientific experience (n = about 10) with asian people in the pool is that they follow the cliche that they are committed to the task and hard working, but make for slow and slightly frustrated swimmers, doing a lot of pulling and kicking without much result.

Most of us are not hypermobile, 6.5 foot tall, built like Phelps and still enjoy swimming with all our bigger or smaller handicaps.

there are some interesting issues here that go beyond mere data collecting and stereotypes: Let's start out with the question of who is a sinker and who is not. Let's assume we have a good definition of what a sinker is (take the pencil test, if you like). Next question is whether or not there is a correlation between sinking and other personal qualities. Race might be one of them, except that there is a real problem here in defining who is black and who is white. In European/American culture, anyone with some ancestry from Africa, no matter how small, tends to get classified as black, but that is purely cultural. We have no good definitions here to work with. At least none that I am aware of. Next question: is sinking a genetic are an acquired trait? In America, land of fast food, we have a lot of overweight people who don't sink very well. There may be a correlation between being overweight and being poor, and now we get into the question of which races and ethnic groups are more likely to be poor in America.

So a study which tries to correlate race with sinking is subject to a lot of questions. Race is itself a stereotype which tells you all sorts of things about the person in question like
(1) how good are they at dancing?
(2) how good a student are they?
(3) how good are they at sports of different types, basketball, swimming?
All of these correlations get passed on by mouth, but they may miss the point, which is that we may simply be creating the very stereotypes we believe in by our past history and societal behavior.

I forgot, is this a forum on swimming? Ooops....

Hi Danny.
I will try that at my next visit to the pool, hopefully tommorow.
What I have tried to do in the past is to take a full breath, relax then let the body do what it wants to do. I immediately feel my legs start to drop, (whilst other people legs stay up), I this point I guess I give up and assume I'm sinking.
As I find it hard to float or doggy paddle, I cant afford to get tired or remain in water too deep, so when this happens I have to work hard not to panic

Originally Posted by Abdargush

When I read such a non-sense I hesitate between trolling and ignorance. This is completely unfounded.
Nowadays, many said "black" swimmers compete at the highest level: Simone Manuel, Lia Neal, Alia Atkinson, Coralie Balmy, Mehdy Metella, Cullen Jones, among others.
Who is able to divide the mankind in defined groups such as whites and blacks, anyway?




In my opinion, it is better to not write anything if one cannot back up one's assertion with serious data. This sentence is utterly absurd. In this forum, nobody knows anything about the OP's bone density nor whether it would have any real impact on his swimming. In fact, it has been shown that floatability has none to little impact on swimming performance, rather "The span, the length of the lower limbs, the bi-acromial distance, the surface of the master-couple, are related in decreasing order of importance to the swimming performance, whereas there is no correlation between the Performance and the flotation index " (Tests statiques et dynamiques en relation avec la performance en natation, Caterini, R.; Chollet, D.; Micallef, J.-P., Staps : revue internationale des sciences du sport et de l'éducation physique, 12 (1991), 25 , S. 45-56, Lit.).

Such "rumors" are at best groundless, and were originally and happily used to despise minorities in certain regions. Disseminating such "rumors" does not serve the swimming community and should be banned by everyone with a minimum of reason.

It wasn't my intention to open a can of worms here, and I added that bit of information to determine if it was a factor to me struggling to stay afloat, with the view that the more bouyancy I have the easier it would be for me to swim. As I thought most of my efforts were used in keeping afloat as opposed to propelling me forward.
In regards to swimming techniques etc, I have very little knowledge in comparison, I can say that I've not met another black person that finds swimming easy, so whether this reinforced the rumour or what it's what I grew up with and could have been subconciously stuck

I ask the next question out of observation and personal experience. Can an elite athelete swim at the top level, but have to work harder than his / her counter parts in order to do so?

[Danny]

Hi Keith,

to tell the truth, I suspect that the question of whether or not you are a sinker is only of marginal importance. The best answer to this question would be that you are not a sinker, in which case you will no longer have a convenient explanation for all of the problems you are experiencing, which everyone else who tries to teach themselves freestyle as an adult also experiences. Knowing that you are not a sinker will make it clear to you that the problems you are facing can be solved if only you take the time and effort to solve them, and this can be a big help. On the other hand, if you determine that you are a sinker, then this will provide a convenient explanation for all of your difficulty and perhaps lead you to conclude that swimming may just not be for you. Of course the latter conclusion is not really true. The amount you stay afloat depends on how dense you are, which is not something you can change in the short term (other than perhaps putting on an extra 50 lbs of fat, which floats quite well). Anyway, even sinkers can learn to swim quite well and I believe there are a few TI instructors who are in fact sinkers. But it does make the process of learning to breath somewhat more difficult.

In the end, you are who you are, and if you want to learn to swim and breath comfortably, this will take some time and effort.

I wouldn't agonize about this question too much.

Originally Posted by Danny

Hi Keith,

to tell the truth, I suspect that the question of whether or not you are a sinker is only of marginal importance. The best answer to this question would be that you are not a sinker, in which case you will no longer have a convenient explanation for all of the problems you are experiencing, which everyone else who tries to teach themselves freestyle as an adult also experiences. Knowing that you are not a sinker will make it clear to you that the problems you are facing can be solved if only you take the time and effort to solve them, and this can be a big help. On the other hand, if you determine that you are a sinker, then this will provide a convenient explanation for all of your difficulty and perhaps lead you to conclude that swimming may just not be for you. Of course the latter conclusion is not really true. The amount you stay afloat depends on how dense you are, which is not something you can change in the short term (other than perhaps putting on an extra 50 lbs of fat, which floats quite well). Anyway, even sinkers can learn to swim quite well and I believe there are a few TI instructors who are in fact sinkers. But it does make the process of learning to breath somewhat more difficult.

In the end, you are who you are, and if you want to learn to swim and breath comfortably, this will take some time and effort.

I wouldn't agonize about this question too much.

Excellent reply, and has given me a new approach to the problem, thanks.

The expression
"If you think you cant or you think you're can you are probably correct", comes to mind

[Danny]

Great! I'm glad we got that behind us. the next thing I would suggest is to look through all of the websites that ZenTurtle originally posted, because they all contain good information. Especially the first one he posted on reasons why people drop their legs when swimming. Just keep in mind that this short summary may make the problem seem trivial, and it isn't. I've been swimming freestyle for years, and I still have a tendency to make some of the mistakes that are pointed out in that video, even though I know I shouldn't be doing it. So these are hard things to master and (at least in my dismal case) they can take years to correct, but the first step on the path to correction is to know what you should be aiming at.

ZT has a lot of good information, but there is always the danger of information overload. It always helps to focus on the "low hanging fruit" or the most serious problems that are preventing you from improving.

Good luck!

[Zenturtle]

In the end a good swimmer who sinks will be spending less energy than a bad swimmer that floats:
You can go from 1 min 52 to 57sec/100m with training and technique...


Moussambani gained entry to the Olympics without meeting the minimum qualification requirements via a wildcard draw designed to encourage participation by developing countries lacking full training facilities. While Pieter van den Hoogenband won in a time of 48.30 seconds (setting a world record of 47.84 in the semi-finals), Moussambani took more than twice that time to finish (1:52.72). "The last 15 metres were very difficult", Moussambani said. Because the other two swimmers in his heat made false starts, and were thus disqualified, he won the heat unopposed.

Before coming to the Olympics, Moussambani had never seen a 50 m (160 ft) long Olympic-size swimming pool. He took up swimming eight months before the Olympics and had practiced in a lake, and later a 12-metre swimming pool in a hotel in Malabo,[3] that he was only given access to between 5 and 6 AM.[4]

Despite lowering his personal best down to under 57 seconds,[7] Moussambani was denied entry into the 2004 Olympic Games due to a visa bungle.[8] He did not take part in the 2008 Summer Olympics.[9] In March 2012 he was appointed coach of the national swimming squad of Equatorial Guinea.[10]

[WFEGb]

Hello,

love that story. Seems we swimmers have with "Moussambani the Dolphin" (WFEGb-creation) an equivalent to what the ski-jumpers have with "Eddi the Eagle".

Best regards,
Werner

Originally Posted by Zenturtle

Can you give a short summary of that article?

I dont know if black people have a higher density than the avarage white, but being a floater certainly makes swimming easier and also more enjoyable in general I think.
Most elite sprinter dont float very well probably, but like a half sinking speedboat with a giant outboard motor, they have a big engine to overcompensate that small handicap.
I think its allowed (is there any real proof?)to say that black people have a great talent pool of people with strength combined with a great amount of fast twitch fibers making them often superior in sprinting, boxing, gymnastics, etc.
There must be plenty talents out there that can become olympic sprint medal winners, but like tennis, most blacks usually dont grow up where swimming as a child is normal culture.
I dont know about long distance swimming. Being a sinker is a bit of a handicap there I guess.

if you are interested in your density, do the pencil float test. Inhale as much as possible and see how much of your head stays above water.
Half a head above water is avarage density.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWwRGrPquJU

My totally unscientific experience (n = about 10) with asian people in the pool is that they follow the cliche that they are committed to the task and hard working, but make for slow and slightly frustrated swimmers, doing a lot of pulling and kicking without much result.

Most of us are not hypermobile, 6.5 foot tall, built like Phelps and still enjoy swimming with all our bigger or smaller handicaps.

Did the pencil test today, there was about an inch of my head above water.