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What happened to the Breastroke when I wasn't looking? |
back in the 60's i was a competitive swimmer and my preferred competitions were 100m and 200 m. breastroke. I swam up to around the time of the 1968 Mexico Olympics and almost went for my country but chose to quit swimming for university entrance instead. For many ,many years i didn't watch swimming competitions and maybe 25 years went by. When I started watching again(L.A.,Seoul etc etc )I noticed that everybody was swimming a very strange breastroke that looked as if if they were bobbing straight up and down but the times had improved miraculously. When did this change take place? who started it? What exactly are breaststrokers doing differently from the classic style of the 60's(ROME<TOKYO<MEXICO)? wow! nice cut and paste job, 12yy. nothing like regurgitating information from wikipedia here on Yahoo.Answers the major reason for the breaststroke you see today is the rule change of about 12 years ago that allowed swimmers heads to completely submerge. before this change, a swimmer would be disqualified if his head went completely under water during the stroke. (i.e. after the break-out off the start or the turn.) how swimmers took advantage of this rule change was to lift themselves higher out of the water, then "dive" back in, since there was no longer any worry about being disqualified for a submerged head. some swimmers (e.g. Amanda Beard) really exaggerated this motion to almost absurdness, but no one has argued that the technique wasn't highly effective, as Amanda Beard broke the American record in both the 100 and 200 meter breaststroke at age 14. Spazz5699 is correct though, the drastic up and down has subsided over the years in favor of a stroke that is somewhat in the middle of the two extremes. the most significant recent rule change is the inclusion of a dolphin style kick when performing the first arm pull off the start and turns, although this rule has not had the drastic effect on times as the prior rule change. Source(s): 34 years competitive swimming, 20 years coaching and teaching Back in the 60s the swimmers hadn't yet discovered the fastest way of swimming breathstroke so they swam the way you did, now swimmers prefer the new way, they tend to raise themselves higher and dive straight back into the water. 1928 was the start of the scientific study of swimming by David Armbruster, coach at the University of Iowa, who filmed swimmers from underwater. One breaststroke problem Armbruster researched was that the swimmer was slowed down significantly while bringing the arms forward underwater. In 1934 Armbruster refined a method to bring the arms forward over water in breaststroke. While this "butterfly" technique was difficult, it brought a great improvement in speed. One year later, in 1935, Jack Sieg, a swimmer also from the University of Iowa developed a technique involving swimming on his side and beating his legs in unison similar to a fish tail, and modified the technique afterward to swim it face down. Armbruster and Sieg combined these techniques into a variant of the breaststroke called butterfly, with the two kicks per cycle being called dolphin fishtail kick. Using this technique Sieg swam 100 yards (91 m) in 1:00.2. However, even though this technique was much faster than regular breaststroke, the dolphin fishtail kick violated the rules. Butterfly arms with a breaststroke kick were used by a few swimmers in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin for the breaststroke competitions. In 1938, almost every breaststroke swimmer was using this butterfly style, yet this stroke was considered a variant of the breaststroke until 1952, when it was accepted as a separate style with its own set of rules. In the early 1950s, another modification was developed for breaststroke. Breaking the water surface increases the friction, reducing speed; swimming underwater increases speed. This led to a controversy at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, and six swimmers were disqualified, as they repeatedly swam long distances underwater. However, a Japanese swimmer, Masaru Furukawa, circumvented the rule by not surfacing at all after the start, but swimming as much of the length underwater as possible before breaking the surface. He swam all but 5 m underwater for the first three 50-m lengths, and also swam half underwater for the last length, winning the gold medal. The adoption of this technique led to many swimmers suffering from oxygen starvation and even to some swimmers passing out during the race, so a new rule was introduced by the FINA, limiting the distance that can be swum underwater after the start and after every turn, and requiring the head to break the surface every cycle. Since then, the development of breaststroke has gone hand-in-hand with the FINA rules. In about the mid 1960s, the rules changed to prevent the arm stroke from going beyond the hip line, except during the first stroke after the start and after each turn. In about the mid 1980s, swimmers were allowed to break the water with parts of the body other than the head. This led to a variant of the stoke in which the arms are brought together as usual under the body after the pull but then are thrown forward over the water from under the chin until the arms are completely extended. There was a controversy at the 2004 Summer Olympics at Athens after Japan鈥檚 Kosuke Kitajima won the gold medal in the 100 m breaststroke race over American Brendan Hansen, the world-record-holder. Video from underwater cameras showed Kitajima using a dolphin kick at the start and at some of the turns. Officials claimed that these kicks were not visible from above the surface of the water, so the result stood. In July 2005, FINA changed the rules to allow one dolphin kick at the start and at each turn, this change taking effect on 21 September, 2005. The new way makes swimming breaststroke much faster. www.wikipedia.org It would be quilte impossible to pinpoint an exact time for such a change. Swimming is a sport in constant evolution, as athletes and coaches search for new ways to achieve better times. Even now the "bobbing-up-and-down" style you mention is falling out of favor, as we try to eliminate wasted motions from each stroke (the goal for a race is neither at the ceiling, nor the bottom of the pool, but always straight ahead). NCAA D1 swimmer Swim Camp Counselor Coach |
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