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In practice it is important to circle swim so nobody gets injured, but in meets it is just as important to swim in the middle of the lane. We came across this short article posted on the Corvallis Aquatic Team website. It was written by Jan Prins and originally published in Swimming World magazine. Jan is a professor of kinesiology at the University of Hawaii.
It isn't often when we can sound both frivolous and deadly serious at the same time. This is one of those occasions because, distilled to its purest form, the winner in our sport is the swimmer who stays as close to a straight-line path as possible and covers this path in the shortest possible time.
How this is accomplished is complicated, but in the realm of biomechanics, this is where we usually start - by examining the most fundamental concepts associated with motion: distance and linear displacement.
By definition, a distinction is made between "distance" and "displacement." While "distance" is a change in position, "displacement" is the difference between where we start and finish.
We can agree that in competitive swimming, "displacement" doesn't have much practical significance because most races start and end at the same wall. what is of importance is "distance," which for each race is a fixed measurement.
Consider the dimensions of a typical lane in short course meters. The swimmer moves in a rectangle, 25 meters long and usually 2-1/2 meters wide. The diagonal distance between the two opposite ends is 25.12 meters.
If the swimmer swims at a pace of 2 meters/second - which is a pace equal to a 50-second 100 meter swim - and moves diagonally instead of at right angles to the walls, it will take an additional 6-hundreths of a second to cover each length. Multiply this by the number of lengths, and it is easy to see that watching that black line on the bottom of the pool and not racing in circles is critical. Also, remember: if the athlete swims at a pace that is slower than the example, more time will be added to the final result.
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