Swimmer's Daily

  • A trio of researchers with Hunter College of the City University of New York has found that despite swimming in vastly different events, competitive swimmers tend to have the same body mass index (BMI). In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Christian Gagnon, Michael Steiper and Herman Pontzer describe their study of elite swimmer morphology and how it compared to elite runner morphology.

    Most people have likely recognized the differences in the way elite runners are built—those who run short distances very fast tend to have a lot of muscle. Those who run for very long distances, on the other hand, tend to be very thin. These differences make sense logically—carrying extra muscle or fat in long-distance running would require more energy expenditure. In this new effort, the researchers wondered if the same might be true for swimmers.

    To learn more about elite  morphology, the researchers accessed a publicly available database that holds information for Olympic athletes. For their study, they focused on swimmers competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London—and only those who swam freestyle (aka the Australian crawl). For each athlete, they looked at height, weight and in which events they swam. The first two metrics allowed them to calculate a BMI for each athlete, which they used as a means for comparing morphology between swimmers.

    The researchers discovered that elite swimmers all tended to have a similar morphology regardless of the events in which they swam. Those who swam short 50-meter races had approximately the same BMI as those who swam much longer 10,000-meter marathons. They did note that male and female swimmers had slightly different BMI averages—23 for men and 21 for women, and that height did not appear to play a factor in different length events.

    The researchers suggest that the differences in  between swimmers and runners is likely due to gravity. Runners have to carry weight with them as they run; swimmers, on the other hand, do not—their weight is borne by the water.

    Read phys.org

  • German lifeguards have issued a warning that a growing number of child drownings this summer are linked to their parents’ obsession with mobile phones.

    More than 300 people have drowned in Germany this year, with hardly a day passing during the current heatwave when a swimmer has not died.

    The German Lifeguard Association (DLRG) – the biggest organisation of its kind in the world, providing 40,000 volunteer lifeguards at German beaches, lakes and the coast – has made a direct connection between children getting into difficulty in the water and parents being too busy on their mobile phones to notice.

    “Too few parents and grandparents are heeding the advice: when your children and grandchildren are in the water, put your smartphone away,” Achim Wiese, the DLRG’s spokesman, said.

    Read The Guardian

    Photo by JD Hancock

  • No, this isn’t Jeopardy. This is for real.

    Do you know the shape of your face? Is it a small face, is it medium or would you say you have a large face? Do you have long eyelashes? Long eyelashes can hit the lenses of your goggles. This can be very annoying when you are swimming. If you have small or recessed eyes, you may need to wear small lensed goggles, even though they have a smaller field of vision. If you want a wider field of vision, check out the Aqua Sphere Company. These are all things you need to consider when you are paying good money for swim goggles. (FYI: Even though I am an adult woman, I wear “youth” goggles.) The googles need to fit the face. Just sayin!

    (more…)

  • PopSci found the lost and forgotten first underwater film. It’s a story too strange and horrifying to be fiction (and, yes, it involves a shark and a horse). Also, it’s the first footage of a shark ever recorded.

  • Mike Pixie O’Gorman captured a stunning timelapse at Nun’s Beach, Ballybunion, as beachgoers enjoy the stretch in the evening and fine weather.

    https://youtu.be/oJf9RVbBP0g

  • This is a video of a great white shark breaching the water’s surface off the coast of Wellfleet, Massachusetts in an attempt to eat a researcher’s feet, who’s standing on the bow pulpit of an Atlantic White Shark Conservancy research vessel while trying to tag the shark.

    See Geekologie

  • YMCA is stepping up to prevent drownings and offering free swimming lessons.

  • Swimming legend and Olympic gold medallist Chad Le Clos talks about his experiences at Youth Olympic Games in Singapore 2010 and how the YOG prepared him for the Olympic Games.

  • Swimmer Ross Edgley broke the world record for the longest staged sea swim on Tuesday (August 14) when he completed 74 days in the sea as he attempts to swim around Britain.

    https://youtu.be/nbJcj1cedRg