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.
Jonty Skinner is always concocting some new formula to think differently about gaining speed in swimming. If you haven’t heard his talk on “Hydro Freestyle”, check it out here. In this video, he talked with SwimSwam on his new equation he’s been trying to solve, which is velocity = propelling energy/drag.
Skinner goes on to explain a way he thinks you can increase propelling efficiency to ultimately increase your velocity. I won’t try to explain it though… just watch the video.
Just some clarification on this. I pause for quite some time at the beginning of the video because I am deciding how much to say & how to frame it. In the end I used the term Propelling Efficiency over Mechanical Power since I thought it would help the process. I have always been a thinker and an explorer and I know from experience that if you frame something in way that makes it seem “too scientific” it causes people to smile and say that sounds awesome but they never act on it. In this case I was sharing a concept that I have been exploring and I needed a little bit of “science” to give it context. If I… Read more »
In my opinion, once you start creating new definitions you open yourself to academic criticism. You use D for drag and the equation equals velocity but D equals K * V^2 so you have linear relationships. These are from decades of academia so if you have something new it better be supported by a controlled study.
If you are proposing new thoughts, theories, concepts, don’t create an equation using known variables. You have a wealth of experience so that is what is valuable and important. Counsilman, Rushall, Costill, Barbosa, and Mujika all tested their theories by expanding on known concepts without redefining existing fundamentals.
At the very least Jonty has stimulated discussion, which is positive….agree or disagree aside…discussion can stimulate growth. Stay with it!
Just sharing Jonty’s wikipedia page…in case anyone has not read his depth of experience in the sport: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonty_Skinner
This is all well and good, but until His sprinters can finish a race without looking like they are going to completely die, it’s not worth anything!
Robert Howard looked pretty good this summer in the 100 free.
Jonty is THE MAN!!!!
While I think the concepts that hes trying to explain are valid; the math is flat out incorrect.
The equation he’s trying to describe is Kinetic Energy….
Force Propulsion – Force Drag = 1/2 Mass * Velocity Squared…..
This solves to: V = SqRt ( 2 * (Fp – Fd)) / m)
Nerd.
Jonty puts it out there, he elects to challenge your thinking. For those who elect to criticise his thoughts/approach, I look forward to reading your technical contributions. Always happy to learn. In the meantime, thanks to Jonty.
I find this thinking dangerous! The spread of utterly incorrect misinformation does not indeed help the sport move forward, it will instead result in younger coaches who look up to coaches like this spreading this as gospel! We need to stop accepting dumb downed pseudo-science just because it comes from “expert coaches”… Take a deep dive and deliver correct information, if not, stay in your lane.
I’ve always enjoyed the thoughtfulness of Jonty’s coaching. I was fortunate enough to swim with him in the 80s and he is creative and constantly trying to create an environment that fosters success. Never stop learning. Never stop challenging your ways of thinking. Thanks, coach.
So it’s somewhat the reverse of USRPT: with USRPT you start with the race-specific pattern and hardwire that. Jonty (and Popov long before him) seems to say that the typical race pattern is too variable, so you hardwire the meticulous slow pattern and try to transfer it to race conditions.
“The Talent Code” -Dan Coyle