Body Roll in Swimming

After hearing the success of Alex, I've been spending a lot of time in the small pool practising the total immersion drills, still not quite there yet but I am now paddling at a much more leisure pace yet still being able to keep up with the faster guys in my lane during the club's pool sessions. The total immersion theory really emphasis on body roll but this week I heard from the "Tri-Talk" podcast that body roll may not necessarily mean faster speed. In this week's episode, David Warden, the host, talk about research done on 6 competitve swimmer by analysing their swimming stroke and speed. One of the interesting finding is that when the velocity of the swimmers increases, the degree of body rolls actually decrease. Quite in contrary to what was taugh in total immersion. The swimmers maintain a total body roll of 118 degree at a fast pace while 133 degree at a slower pace when doing a 1500m swim; at 50m sprint pace, the body roll was only 114 degree. Since picking up the TI swimming, I have been really trying hard to exaggerate the body roll maybe I should just be doing what it feels right.

If the weather holds this weekend, I have signed up for a open water swim, the distance is 2.2km from Shek O beach to Big Wave Beach. Let's see how much I have improved.