I could have sworn freestyle swimming styles looked different in Olympics in the ‘90s. It looks like now freestyle is mostly upper body with fewer kicks. Why is this? Why the change?
In: Physics
Kicking isn’t as efficient as pulling; it produces less speed per unit of energy. In the longer races, swimmers pull back on kicking for the sake of muscle efficiency. In the shorter races, it’s worth the loss in efficiency to gain extra speed. Katie ledecky (best distance swimmer of all time) has a ridiculously small kick. It’s just enough to help turn her hips and keep her legs aligned with her body, but it doesn’t use much power from the quads which have huge energy demands. Watch any heat of the 50 freestyle and you will see the opposite kicking style.
Swimming is always progressing by learning how bodies move more efficiently through water; dolphin kicks off the wall weren’t always a thing in the Olympics, but we now know that’s the fastest part of the entire swim, and you won’t see a top swimmer who doesn’t dolphin kick off the wall. I wouldn’t be surprised if swimmers in the 90s had a bigger, stronger kick, because it wasn’t well known that a weaker kick could result in faster swimming.
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