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
The flutter kick provides a lot of power and speed, but also isn’t very energy efficient. Your leg muscles are large and use quite a bit of energy and oxygen, so you run the risk of burning all of your energy if you kick too hard, too early.
For the longer freestyle events, swimmers tend to slow down their kicks to be able to maximize efficiency and maintain their endurance and only ramp up to full speed near the end. The slower kicks often look irregular at first glance, but they’re still on some sort of rhythm (e.g. a 2-beat kick, or 2 kicks per arm stroke).
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