Swimming: A Love Story

Swimming Science: Optimizing Training and Performance Edited by G. John Mullen

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Books; 2018 192 pages; $30.00 ISBN: 9780226287843

When I saw an advertisement in the New York Review of Books for a new book about the science of swimming by the University of Chicago Press, I felt an urge to read it. What a great topic by a great publisher!

Swimming is undoubtedly a public health issue. According to older statistics from sources such as the US Department of Agriculture and the US Census Bureau, cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its Web site (bit.ly/2qHEnce), in the United States in 2009, 36% of children aged 7 to 17 years and 15% of adults swam at least six times per year. Swimming was the fourth most popular recreational activity in the United States (after walking, exercising with equipment, and camping). However, social and racial/ethnic heterogeneity must be substantial.

Swimming Science summarizes the knowledge accrued by basic scientists, mostly physiologists, about the art of moving as fast as possible in water. How did Kyle Chalmers win the gold medal at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games for swimming the 100-meter freestyle in 47.58 seconds, a distance that took Johnny Weissmuller 59 seconds to swim in 1924 to win the same medal?

Swimming needs its own science because swimmers have to negotiate with a medium—water—that has its own complex physics. This separates swimming from all sports performed in the air, the natural human medium.

I do not have the expertise to assess the physiology, physics, and body-conditioning techniques discussed in the book, but I can describe the practical implications that reading the book had on a US Masters Swimming member who for the last 15 years has been trying to work out three hours per week and, in his last race in January 2016, swam 3.35 kilometers in one hour and was ranked 93rd in the 60- to 64-year-old category (bit.ly/2w8ptxg). A disclaimer, however: the book does not refer to people older than 30 years. I extrapolated its contents to me, but this may not have been the authors’ intention.

Swimming Science has six chapters by different authors, but each chapter is divided into questions stated in two ways. For example, “Do technique limitations affect a swimmer’s performance? → Can I still swim fast with a poor technique?” (for this specific question, the answer is that technique is more important than strength).

NEGOTIATING WITH WATER

Chapter 1, “Hydrodynamics,” and Chapter 2, “Technique,” explain why every swim stroke creates turbulence in the water that has consequences on the swimmer’s speed. Consider what I used to experience as an annoying paradox. When the coach said, “3 times 100 meters, descend,” that meant swim each 100 meters faster than the previous one. I swam the first 100 meters at a comfortable pace. I swam the second 100 meters more vigorously to find out that I had decreased my time by only one or two seconds for a much greater effort. I swam the third 100 meters all out and ended up out of breath, but again the gain was ridiculously small compared with the effort I made. Actually, as the chapter explains nicely, turbulence created by vigorous effort can slow the swimmer down, depending on not only how the turbulence interacts with the body but also because the turbulence reduces the density of the mass of water that the hands, arms, legs, and feet are displacing and that propel the body forward. Imagine swimming in sparkling water!

When I swim at a comfortable pace, my movement is precise and smooth, and I slither in the water rather than fight it. I get the most speed out of my available muscle power. Water is a partner, and, if I may say so, swimmers are happier when they please this particular partner. Technique allows you to move optimally in the water.

TRAINING

Chapter 3, “Pool Training,” and Chapter 4, “Dryland Training,” devote 60 pages to pool versus dry land training. To increase swimming speed, every detail is important: hand positioning, path and pitch, hip rotation, body undulation, coordination, constant velocity, and so on. Keeping the form is key, but moving faster ruins the form if the body is not strong enough. And to my disappointment, most of this muscle power is acquired out of the water, in dry land training.

EVERYTHING BUT THE WATER

There is a swim equipment outlet that brags that it sells everything but the water. This is also true of this book. Water is treated as an abstract physical body but not as the living body it is. We do not swim in pristine water but in a medium full of whatever is used to disinfect it and whatever swimmers sweat or discharge into it. A wealth of literature exists on this subject (e.g., Richardson et al.¹). The quality of the water affects the swimmer’s health and can interfere with the joy and quality of this particular relationship. Chapters 5 and 6 are about nutrition and injury prevention and rehabilitation, but the book is missing a chapter about other health-related aspects of swimming.

Open-water swimming is another water-related question the book does not address. This might be asking too much, but the rules applying to pool swimming may not apply when swimming in lakes, rivers, seas, and oceans (i.e., open-water swimming). Moreover, dealing with waves, currents, wildlife, temperature, and so on makes you “feel like a natural swimmer” in a timeless environment.

A LOVE STORY

Having read Swimming Science, do I swim faster? Definitely. Substantially so, even though I do not train on dry land. However, and most importantly, my relationship with the water has evolved. I now focus on how I swim in it instead of how fast I swim. I strive for harmony and efficiency rather than power. I enjoy it more and have many more things to concentrate on during the 90 minutes of the workout.

Swimming Science is a wonderful read for those interested in understanding how extraordinary athletes have been able to swim at incredible speed. But it is also an inspiring and potentially transforming read for ordinary people for whom swimming is simply a love story with the water.