1 - What’s your Data Focus? Underwaters

While the GoSwim app gives a deep dive into all of the details of swimming, when coaches have many athletes at a competition, analyzing all the data may be too much

By championing one segment of the data, athletes will understand the importance of that data point and show improvement.

Our first data focus will take the underwater portion of a swim. There are three data points regarding the underwater phase, Breakout Split, Breakout Distance, and Underwater Velocity.

Simply put, how long was the swimmer underwater, how far did they go, and how fast were they.

Even if you only take one of these three, Underwater Velocity, it opens up many questions and a search for how to get better. Would the swimmer go faster overall by adding a single dolphin kick to this particular race, a 400-long course free?

Looking at the Underwater Velocity compared to the Swim Velocity, we see that the swimmer is consistently faster. Of course, this is because of the push off the wall and a few dolphin kicks in the streamline position. But again, could one more kick maintain that velocity just a bit longer and improve each split by a tenth of two?

Or would the extra time underwater sap the athlete's energy because it would be longer without air?

By focusing on just one aspect of the swim, you will be changing many parameters of the race. You can look at that later if desired, but we all know about the importance of underwater, which is why this is our first focus point in this short series of articles.

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