Your Swimming Transmission

This past summer, I’ve had the chance to spend a lot of time swimming longer distances between turns.  I’ve learned to appreciate a dynamic I haven’t thought much about.  Today I was marveling at the amount of work it was taking to get moving out of a flip turn, but once moving, how little effort it took to keep it going once accelerated.  I decided there must be a transmission quality to swimming.  I came to this conclusion after thinking about a radio program on NPR I heard on my drive home, about, of all things, hybrid vehicles.  These vehicles use most of their energy starting.  Once moving they use little.  Swimming is like that.  Drawing on my favorite analogy - the torpedo - once you apply the energy to get started, the momentum keeps you moving forward.  You just have to make sure as little as possible gets in the way of slowing you down once accelerated.  So do this next time you swim laps.  Kick off the wall, put a strong effort into coming up to speed - remember to keep your body torpedo shaped - and then relax and let your pulls and kick keep you at speed.   You can actually relax at this point.