A different stroke technique of skilled swimmers to exert hand propulsion between the front crawl stroke and the butterfly

Biography

Dr Shige Kudo is a senior academic staff at Republic Polytechnic. He received a PhD in Biomechanics from School of Physical Education, University of Otago, New Zealand. Shige has been studying the hand propulsion during swimming, the effect of hand acceleration on hydrodynamic force on the hand, and kinematics of aquatic-based walking.

Synopsis

Both swimming strokes of the front crawl stroke and the butterfly have the insweep and upsweep phases, which are main propulsive phases for both swimming strokes (Maglischo, 1993). The butterfly may be considered as the symmetrical stroke of the front crawl stroke. Thus, a good front crawl stroke’s swimmer seems to be a good butterfly’s swimmer. However, the stroke technique to exert hand propulsion in the front crawl stroke can be different from the one for the butterfly because the butterfly involves the movement of trunk undulation, which could result in the different hand propulsive technique between the front crawl stroke and the butterfly. The aim of this study was, therefore, to investigate if the hand propulsive technique of the front crawl stroke is different from the one for the butterfly.