I put on my pink goggles, pull my black swim cap over my hair, and maintain my composure like Michael Phelps does before a race. Monday afternoon lap swim at my neighborhood YMCA, and I’m going to try the fish kick. The majority of fish wiggle horizontally as they move through the water. To execute the fish kick, you must fully submerge below, lie on your side, maintain your arms tight over your head in a streamline, and drive yourself forward with symmetrical undulations. I believe I have a chance after decades of swimming, some of it at a competitive level. After what I can only characterize as a fight, I push off the wall, but the water resists, and I float to the surface looking a much like a dead fish.
Since we are land animals, we are not born swimmers. It is up to us to determine the quickest method for learning to swim since we must do so. There may be an end in sight to the quest. Experts in stroke mechanics have found in recent years that swimming below the surface is faster than swimming above it. The possibility that this could occur in track and field is difficult to imagine, according to swim coach and blogger Rick Madge. “Nobody is going to develop a brand-new running technique that will be faster than anything else. However, we only did that when swimming. The fish kick is possibly the quickest subsurface form to date.
But it’s also challenging. After my failed try at the YMCA, I get in touch with Misty Hyman, an assistant coach at Arizona State University who used the fish kick to win gold in the 2000 Olympics during the underwater section of her race. She agrees to teach me how to swim at a New Jersey indoor pool where she is directing a swim clinic. She is there when I arrive, sporting her gold medal and being accosted by aspiring adult swimming classes who want her autograph. She smiles and waves me over, which relaxes me. I almost fail to remember that a world-class swimmer will soon be evaluating my subpar abilities.
Observing a human form move in this manner is unsettling yet natural at the same time.
We proceed to a swim lane, but not before she gives us some advice. She instructs me to hinge at the shoulders, ribs, hips, and knees in order to perform the fish kick. I make a streamline with my arms over my head and simultaneously tilt my head and arms back and forth. She instructs me to contract my shoulders. I do. Still tighter, she commands. I almost wounded myself as I pulled them in. “That’s correct,” she responds. She compliments me on my rib hinge technique, but I still have to pay close attention to it because I feel like my organs are collapsing with each bend. The hip and knee hinges feel more natural, so I test them.
We enter the lane and complete a few warm-up laps. She then displays her fish kick to me. She pushes off the wall and floats like a minnow off into the distance. Observing a human form move in this manner is unsettling yet natural at the same time.
Competitive swimming has largely concentrated on what occurs at the water’s surface up until recently. Swimmers competed utilizing the breaststroke in early 19th-century England, which many believe to be the birthplace of the contemporary sport. A few decades later, two Native Americans who were visiting London showed how they learnt to swim using the front crawl, which is a speedier stroke. According to one observer, “they blow forcefully with their feet, producing strange dances, and lash the water ferociously with their arms, like the sails of a windmill.” Eventually, the British recovered from their astonishment. The butterfly stroke, which avoided the drag of the underwater recovery required by the breaststroke, appeared next, in the early 20th century. After the front crawl, the butterfly became the second-fastest stroke.
Everyone swimming at the surface is limited in pace. According to Ryan Atkison, a sport biomechanist at the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario, “You’re always constrained by your hull speed.” It’s a nautical rule that swimmers can also use. According to the hypothesis, a swimmer on the surface is only able to go as quickly as the bow wave they produce. The length of the bow wave should theoretically extend the entire length of the swimmer’s body as swim speed increases. A swimmer who is 2 meters (6 feet, 5 inches) tall may swim at a maximum speed of one body length per second, or roughly 1.9 to 2.6 meters per second.
“Unless you climb up on top of that wave, you can’t go any faster than that,” explains Atkison. However, he adds, “Humans can’t physically climb out of that trough. Some animals can, as dolphins can porpoise and jump over top of that bow wave. “Being better under water, where we really don’t have those maximum constraints on speed, is the only genuine way to get faster.”
When Harvard University coach Joe Bernal discovered that some of his swimmers were faster if they stayed underwater and dolphin kicked in the 1980s, coaches started to take advantage of this phenomenon. With the exception of the swimmer being flat on his stomach rather than turned on his side, this maneuver is very identical to the fish kick. Since there was no rule against it, some incredibly strong underwater swimmers stayed underwater for practically the full length of the pool. All of that changed in 1998 when FINA, the international governing body for competitive swimming, decreed that backstroke swimmers had to surface after 15 meters.
World-class swimmer Hyman developed into adulthood amid the undersea revolution. She explains that she could travel 30 meters underwater without breathing, saying, “I started staying under water longer than is customary when I was 13.” I discovered that I could move more quickly underwater than on land. The majority of swimmers used the dolphin kick to advance underwater, but Hyman’s coach, Bob Gillet, wanted to try something different. He read a 1995 Scientific American report about how tuna could swim at speeds of almost 50 mph, compared to dolphins’ top speeds of 25 mph. The research discovered that a fish’s tail flick produced greater propulsion than a marine mammal’s tail. Gillet pondered whether the dolphin kick may be stronger when performed from the side, creating horizontal undulations similar to those of a fish.
Gillet tested it on a chilly December day in Phoenix in 1995. Gillet invited Hyman to test it when he showed up for practice at the outdoor pool there. I referred to him as a mad scientist in the most polite possible manner, she recalls. Her initial attempts were clumsy, and she eventually found herself three lanes away from where she had started. Nevertheless, she improved and soon began to swim through the water like an eel. She was moving more quickly than when she used the dolphin kick. more quickly than she’d ever swum before. This gave Gillet a different thought.
They headed to the neighborhood country club pool where Gillet could walk out to the edge of a diving board to take pictures and the lighting was stronger. One end of a long, thin rubber tube was attached to Hyman’s ankle, and the other end was wrapped around her wrist and down one side of her torso. The tube was then filled with pre-made food dye, and Hyman sealed it with her thumb. As Gillet was taking pictures, she leaped into the pool, let go of her thumb, and took off. They were shocked by what they later saw in the video. After each of her horizontal kicks, the dye whirled out to reveal enormous vortices. Gillet had a hunch that she was driven forward by these little whirlpools, some of which were 4 feet in diameter. The bottom of the pool and the water’s surface might have interfered with these vortices when Hyman performed the dolphin kick facedown, slowing her down, he also reasoned.
The fish kick may be challenging to top once perfected.
The fish kick has gained supporters even though these concepts are still up for debate. Professor of sports science Luc Collard has tested a variety of underwater swimming techniques, including the fish kick with the arms down and down the swimmer’s side, and claims it may be the fastest. Its potential is astounding. The University of Granada’s Ral Arellano, a professor of physical education and sports, concurs. Some swimmers’ lateral kicking has been found to be faster, he claims. The idea is that the water’s top and the bottom of the pool have no impact on these vortices.
Moving through water inevitably results in vortices. Some are ineffective and impede the swimmer’s movement. The swimmer is propelled forward by others. According to Atkison, “Vortices represent the transfer of momentum from a body into the water and vice versa,” and can therefore both speed up and slow down swimmers. The dolphin kick is more likely to send beneficial vortices down to the pool floor, where they cause turbulence, than up to the pool surface, where they dissipate into waves. While there are no impediments, the fish kick is more likely to propel these vortices sideways, parallel to the water’s surface. According to Rajat Mittal, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University, “Anything that creates waves on the surface is detrimental to swimming effectively.” “There is a greater likelihood that [you] will produce waves on the surface if you are swimming within a foot of the surface than by kicking sideways.”
Atkison thinks that when a swimmer is in shallow water, the fish kick can create vortices that are bigger and more powerful. The pool surface and bottom place lateral and largely unrestricted limits on the water that the dolphin kicker can pull in during her stroke from the volumes above and below her body.
The dolphin kick does not always have these drawbacks, though. Because Olympic and World Championship pools are now at least 2 meters deep, swimming at depths below 1 meter considerably lowers surface turbulence and any differences in the amounts of water drawn. Additionally, the fish kick is intrinsically harder. Arellano claims that the issue with ventral underwater undulatory swimming is that the swimmer cannot control the direction of its swimming and body posture. Having said that, once developed, the fish kick might be difficult to top.
The fish kick needs a separate underwater swimming event to realize its full potential. Many people, though, doubt that will happen. If everyone was swimming underwater, would it be sporty to watch on television? asks Mittal. “Watching them and seeing that they are able to see each other is part of the excitement of swimming.” Hyman is opposed. She thinks an underwater competition would be fascinating in its own right and would love to see it included to professional swimming. “You still have no idea where they’ll turn up. It actually ups the excitement level.
I’m pondering my next move as I’m back at the New Jersey pool. I attempt four kicks before immediately losing my bearings and coming to the surface 12 feet down the pool. Farther than what I did at the YMCA, but still not fantastic. Hyman claims that when she performs the fish kick, she imagines herself bouncing through intangible hoops at the four spots we previously covered. She also suggests that I kick equally hard on both sides, which should direct me in the right direction. Compared to hula hoops, this appears more doable. I give it another shot. This time, I concentrate on making both kicks powerful, and I move farther and straighter than before. Nearly 15 feet.