Beyond the Pancakes: Can we find Kinetic Energy that’s already there?

In Practice + Pancakes, SwimSwam takes you across the country and through a practice day in the life of swimming’s best athletes. It breaks down training sessions, sub sets, and what every team is doing to be at their best. But why are they doing things that way? In Beyond the Pancakes, we dive inside the minds of coaches and athletes, getting a first hand look at why they do the things they do, and where their minds are pointed on the compass of evolution as a swimmer.

In the 2nd part of our time with Jonty Skinner in Bloomington (see part 1 here), we got to hear his perspective on trying to find speed in other ways besides just “working hard”. He compares it to track and field: before the arrival of Usain Bolt in the 100m and 200m dash, running had hit sort of a wall where sprinters weren’t getting much faster. But Bolt broke that barrier and exemplified that new heights were possible.

Skinner doesn’t think swimming is at that point yet. He thinks you don’t have to necessarily have savant level talent and skill to break a world record in sprinting. He discusses his strategy for finding kinetic energy in swimming that’s already there, and how we can harness it and turn it into speed.

FORM is swim goggles with a smart display. FORM is a sports technology company with a simple mission: to break down the barriers between what swimming is and what it could be.

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USAUSAUSA
4 years ago

I feel like Jonty just gets high, thinks about swimming, and takes notes. Then days later when he discovers the notes he left in the freezer next to the Ben and Jerry’s, he deciphers them and comes up with some new brilliant idea.

Blaize
Reply to  USAUSAUSA
4 years ago

What is brilliant about anything he said?

Yozhik
4 years ago

In college we used to do white water rafting in the wildness on kayaks. At the end of the wild part of the river there was a small island with the small museum on it. The tradition was that whoever survive white water must contribute some exhibit of something that is not needed any more (most often something that got broken). The funny comment was required. I especially remember one exhibit that was a simple half full small bottle of activated carbon. Nothing remarkable, but the comment was hilarious, roughly translated: The best stuff to prevent the excessive jet force in the boat.
…..
If you would like to convert the momentum (kinetic energy, using terminology of this… Read more »

AfterShock
Reply to  Yozhik
4 years ago

Without disputing your higher speed conclusion, how much mass do you expect a degassing to remove?

Yozhik
Reply to  AfterShock
4 years ago

It also depends on the speed of the gas. Make more efforts and you will accelerate like a rocket. 😀 You understand I hope it was a joke to entertain you in Halloween night,. The story about this museum however is true. The river name is Kem’ .
But ….how much of speed improvement a swimmer achieves by shaving or longer finger nails for instance. Athletes are seeking for microseconds. 😀

Yozhik
Reply to  Yozhik
4 years ago

Please don’t take any offense, but you sound like a person who is looking in the mirror each morning and is very proud of his/her normality without even defining what it is. We never think of ourselves of being strange. It is all this relatively theory. If one person tells to another one that he is strange then we don’t really know who actually strange is. The only thing that can be said for sure that we are different. So let be interesting in our differences to each other.

John
Reply to  Yozhik
4 years ago

What does any of this have to do with Katinka?

Yozhik
Reply to  John
4 years ago

You want to know? I will satisfy your curiosity. Go back in the time when there was a strong accusation by SW of Hosszu doing doping. There were two popular pictures of her then: one on the blocks before jumping in the water and another one on the podium right after race. On the first picture she has a big belly and on the podium her belly is absolutely flat. Conclusion: having a lot of gas first of all increases the buoyancy and secondly the releasing of gases with the high speed (and loud sound preferably for intimidation of your opponents) will make you unbeatable. Try yourself. You will be surprised. I recommend peas for a better brewing process.
… Read more »

ERVINFORTHEWIN
Reply to  Yozhik
4 years ago

u are getting old with Katinka …just let it go

John
Reply to  Yozhik
4 years ago

TIL “strong accusation” is a single article from a respected swim news magazine

Sks
4 years ago

Oh boy.
He should enroll in phys 101. I heard you can “discover” this stuff there. Also, knowing basic algebra would help his journey to revolutionize physics too. Sigh.

UF needs a new pool
Reply to  Sks
4 years ago

Yes all physics experts know that V = PE / Drag

sven
Reply to  Sks
4 years ago

He’s obviously not using literal scientific terms, just speaking intuitively. Honestly, with a sport like swimming, he’s more likely to hit “the answer” with this method than he is by trying to come up with numerical models.

Between turbulence modeling and biomechanics, each of them is enough of a hassle on their own that trying to incorporate both synchronously sounds like a nightmare. I think even if you could come up with a model that wasn’t total garbage, you wouldn’t be able to store all the data.

Ol' Longhorn
Reply to  sven
4 years ago

People forget that, as a swimmer, he was a phenom. He was scrawny (6’5″, 185 lbs) and he pulverized the Olympic champion Jim Montgomery’s WR by half a second (South Africa was banned from the Olympics then). And he swam very differently —- high turnover rate, not much kick — compared to other sprinters then and now. He figured some things out then on his own, and he’s figuring things out now.

Yabo
Reply to  Sks
4 years ago

Whatever swimmer solves navier stokes will be insane

asdagh
Reply to  Yabo
4 years ago

lmao. The next great swimming coach will have a PhD in fluid dynamics

samulih
Reply to  Sks
4 years ago

at least he is not bad mouthing anyone, just offering his theories, you use them or not, your choice

Ol’ Longhorn
4 years ago

Music to sprinters’ ears: find speed without working hard. I’d be all over that sh*t.

Inside Smoke
Reply to  Ol’ Longhorn
4 years ago

*cries in distance swimmer*

natas
Reply to  Ol’ Longhorn
4 years ago

If only it were true

'Oach
4 years ago

I think the Usain Bolt example is kind of backwards. The 100m was broken several times throughout the 2000s before Bolt, and has been stagnant now since Bolt’s 9.58 in 2009. He built the wall. I agree that swimming is still getting faster.

eagleswim
Reply to  'Oach
4 years ago

The record was getting broken, but it went from 9.79 to 9.74 in almost ten years, I think that’s the “wall” he’s talking about. Then bolt moved it from 9.74 to 9.58 in a year

'Oach
Reply to  eagleswim
4 years ago

Excellent point!

Old Town Road
4 years ago

Aint it going to be moving or rotating?

About Coleman Hodges

Coleman Hodges

Coleman started his journey in the water at age 1, and although he actually has no memory of that, something must have stuck. A Missouri native, he joined the Columbia Swim Club at age 9, where he is still remembered for his stylish dragon swim trunks. After giving up on …

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