Hey Steven, Paul Newsome here – how are you getting on? I was just at the Australian National 10km championships where one of the guys we’ve been doing some GPS tracking work with (Rhys Mainstone) was 2nd over the line (to Richard Weinberger – awesome swim by him!) and first Australian to take the title.
Dean has asked me to get back to you on your queries below.
Firstly, a quick clarification (and not sure where this point has been picked up from, but wherever it is it needs to be changed):
The bicep release creates an outlet for the bicep to expand naturally, which leads to a nice high elbow recovery
The bicep release has been primarily developed to recognise two facts from our testing in Eindhoven with Huub Touissant:
1. standard forearm panels that supposedly ‘catch’ more water, in fact show very little / no scientific evidence that this is the case. Instead we saw greater value in working on the bicep panel for the reasons below.
2. the bicep release (upper arm, not forearm) is designed to assist during the catch phase (not the recovery phase). The super flexible shoulder material assists during the recovery phase by reducing resistance that a less flexible suit would throw up. We do not believe though that the classic high elbow (low hand) recovery of a classic pool stroke is actually beneficial for open water swimming – instead this high elbow position can be more fatiguing on the shoulder and gives the swimmer less clearance in rougher water. Many of the world’s best open water swimmers adopt a straight arm recovery than their pool counterparts as you know Steven.
Where the bicep release helps though is during the catch phase. Many, many swimmers tend to pull through with a very straight arm catch (even without a wetsuit on), this tends to give lift at the front as they press down but causes the legs to sink at the back. In a restrictive wetsuit it can be hard to properly set the catch with a 100 – 120 º bend at the elbow to gain better propulsion and utilise the larger pectoral and lat muscles because the restrictive suit can force the arm to stay fairly straight or cause excessive fatigue when trying to work against the inflexibility of the suit. The bicep release literally does what the name implies and allows the bicep to expand more freely during this phase and in doing so allow the swimmer to get into a better propulsive position without it being quite so fatiguing. The results are proving to be quite special: http://www.youtube.com/user/swimsmooth?feature=mhee#p/u/1/J7dk4cbU8EQ
Hope this all makes sense? Can’t wait to get you trying one Steven!
Kind regards
Paul
Paul Newsome
Head Coach
www.swimsmooth.com
www.swimtypes.com
World Class Coaching in Your Language!
Tel. +61 (0) 431 540 980
From: “Steven Munatones”
Date: 7 March 2012 17:47:34 GMT
To: “‘D Jackson'”
Subject: RE: Congratulations!
Reply-To:
• http://www.openwaterswimming.wiki/index.php?title=Dean_Jackson
• http://www.openwaterswimming.wiki/index.php?title=Huub_Wetsuits
I took the liberty of quickly adding you and Huub Wetsuits to Openwaterpedia since we have over 10,000 people visiting this site a day. Please feel free to add to or modify the entries above. Also, where can I learn more about the bicep release? I would like to do an entire article on this innovation.
This is what I learned from you: The bicep release creates an outlet for the bicep to expand naturally, which leads to a nice high elbow recovery, which reduces fatigue which gives a good arm position under the water.
The questions are: For most people, does a high elbow catch lead to improve arm stroke propulsion? Yes. Now, the inability to have a high elbow catch can be due to the bicep not being able to expand naturally when the elbow is bent. Is this because a traditional wetsuit is so constrictive around the biceps – or around the shoulders? Why does a high elbow catch lead to lower fatigue? How was that measured?
All very cool stuff … I just do not understand it all yet.
From: D Jackson [mailto:deand5d@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 7:04 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Congratulations!
Thank you Steven it is people like yourself with your support that have given me the confidence to make this happen
I look forward to talking more with you very very shortly
Hope you and the family are well
Deano
Sent from my Blackberry and sometimes it spell checks with a totally different word, sorry.
On 7 Mar 2012, at 12:24, “Steven Munatones” wrote:
http://dailynews.openwaterswimming.com/2012/03/turning-point-in-wetsuits.html – I look forward to your continued success.
Steven Munatones
www.openwaterswimming.com
www.dailynewsofopenwaterswimm.wpengine.com
www.openwaterswimming.wiki
Copyright © 2012 by Open Water Source