When it comes to swimming really, really fast, often coaches will have their athletes strap up to some resistance tubing.
The swimmer can swim against the pull of the chord in one direction to develop power, and then with the “pull” of the chord coming back to the wall experience swimming at a much faster rate than they could attain from regular swimming.
Taking it a step further teammates can run alongside the pool deck pulling the stretch chord, making up for the slack that inevitably happens.
In the below video posted to Auburn coach Brett Hawke’s Instagram we get a glimpse into what happens when a world-class sprinter is towed by not one, but by three stretch chords across the length of a 50m pool.
Israeli Olympian Ziv Kalontarov is the lucky athlete who gets to experience hydro-planing across the surface of the pool as though he is wearing a jet-pack. Going this fast is not only a heckuva lot of fun, but as you can see from Ziv’s first few strokes a bit of a shock to your stroke rate and technique.
How fast does he make it across the pool?
By Hawke’s watch he does it in a sultry 13.2 seconds:
See Also:
- The Other Auburn Sprint Set, Or How I Spent 2 Hours Driving the Local Lap Swimmers Crazy. Earlier this year I tried one of Auburn’s “man-makers”– a set of 100×25 fast. Not for the feint of heart.
- Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Training with Fins. There is more to training with fins than just going really, really fast. Here is what you need to know before strapping them on at your next practice.
- 7 Drills for Freestylers. Coach Hawke shares a couple drills (with video) for freestylers looking to tighten up and improve their freestyle.
