Swimming Stroke Development

History

 

Although people have swum since ancient times, swimming strokes have been greatly refined in the past 100 years. The English are considered the first modern society to develop swimming as a sport. By 1837, regular swimming competitions were being held in London's six artificial pools, organized by the National Swimming Society in England. As the sport grew in popularity many more pools were built, and when a new governing body, the Amateur Swimming Association of Great Britain, was organized in 1880, it numbered more than 300 member clubs.

 

In 1896, swimming became an Olympic sport for men with the 100 metres and 1,500 metres freestyle competitions held in open water. Soon after, as swimming gained popularity, more freestyle events were added, followed by the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and finally, the individual medley.

Freestyle

 

The competitions of the 1800s were tame affairs, with swimmers limited to the breast and side strokes to keep their heads above water. But the appearance of two North American Indians at a swim meet in London and the travels to South America of an Englishman revolutionized the sport forever.

 

The North Americans shocked the British in 1844 with their dramatic over-arm stroke. Their arm motions were likened to windmills on the water. This flailing stroke that the Indians introduced to England was in fact centuries old. The inhabitants of the Americas, West Africa and some Pacific islands had been using an over-arm stroke for generations.

 

The sidestroke, in which the swimmer lies on one side, was soon modified to become the over-arm sidestroke. One arm was recovered above the water for increased arm speed. The legs were squeezed together in an uncoordinated action.

 

John Trudgen developed the hand-over-hand stroke, then named the Trudgen. He copied the stroke from South American Indians and introduced it in England in 1873. Each arm recovered out of the water as the body rolled from side to side. The swimmer did a scissors kick with every two arm strokes. This stroke was the forerunner of the front crawl. Kick variations included different multiples of scissors kicks or alternating scissors and flutter kicks.

 

The inefficiency of the early Trudgen kick led Australian Richard Cavill to try new methods. He used a stroke he observed natives of the Solomon Islands using, which combined an up-and-down kick with an alternating over-arm stroke. Cavill taught the new technique to his six sons, who all went on to be championship swimmers. This new style was first used in competition in 1902 at the International Championships. When asked to describe the new style, one of Cavill's sons said it was "like crawling through the water." It became known as the Australian crawl, the stroke that's now known as the front crawl or freestyle.

Backstroke

 

Popularized by Harry Hebner of the United States in the 1912 Olympics, the backstroke is an alternating, wind-milling motion of the arms which resembles an upside-down front crawl.

Breaststroke

 

Until the 1950s, the breaststroke was the only stroke with a required style. The underwater recovery of both arms and legs in the breaststroke is a natural barrier to speed.

 

The breaststroke has always been the most controversial stroke because of ongoing arguments over what constitutes legal or illegal technique. The Berlin Olympics in 1936 saw one of the first attempts at incorporating the then-controversial butterfly stroke into the women's 200 metres breaststroke event, as a few swimmers were recovering their arms above the water rather than under to save time and energy. In 1952, this new stroke, named the butterfly, was given its own rules and competitions outside the breaststroke.

 

Even having a separate stroke didn't end the controversy between the breaststroke and butterfly. Six swimmers were disqualified in breaststroke competition in the Melbourne Games because of different interpretations of what was a breaststroke and what wasn't. One Japanese swimmer found another loophole in the breaststroke by swimming underwater. He found that swimming below the surface of the water was faster than swimming on its surface; so after 1956 underwater swimming was banned from the breaststroke competition.

Butterfly

 

The butterfly was developed in the 1930s and evolved from the breaststroke. However, the butterfly didn't become an official Olympic stroke until the 1956 Summer Games.

 

In 1934, David Armbruster, coach at the University of Iowa, devised a double over-arm recovery out of the water. This "butterfly" arm action gave more speed but required greater training and conditioning. Controversy followed and while not everyone was doing this quasi-breaststroke, those swimmers that did, were winning races with good times.

 

Then in 1935, Jack Sieg, a University of Iowa swimmer, developed the skill of swimming on his side and beating his legs in unison like a fish's tail. He then developed the leg action face down. Armbruster and Sieg combined the butterfly arm action with this leg action and learned to coordinate the two efficiently. With two kicks to each butterfly arm action, this kick was eventually known as the dolphin fishtail kick.

 

Even though the butterfly breaststroke, as it was called, was faster than the breaststroke, the dolphin fishtail kick was declared a violation of competitive rules. For the next 20 years, champion breaststrokers used an out-of-water arm recovery (butterfly) with a shortened breaststroke kick. In the late 1950s, the butterfly stroke with the dolphin kick was legalized as a separate stroke for competition. Many swimmers say the "wiggle" is the key to the stroke and that a swimmer who can undulate through the water naturally can more easily learn the butterfly.