Summer，we should stay in the water
History of swimming
Swimming has been recorded since prehistoric times; the earliest recording of swimming dates back to Stone Age paintings from around 7,000 years ago. Written references date from 2000 BC. Some of the earliest references to swimming include the Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Bible, Beowulf, and other sagas. In 1778, Nikolaus Wynmann, a German professor of languages, wrote the first swimming book, The Swimmer or A Dialogue on the Art of Swimming (Der Schwimmer oder ein Zweigespr?ch über die Schwimmkunst). Competitive swimming in Europe started around 1800, mostly using breaststroke. In 1873, John Arthur Trudgen introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native Americans. Due to a British dislike of splashing, Trudgen employed a scissor kick instead of the front crawl's flutter kick. Swimming was part of the first modern Olympic games in 1896 in Athens. In 1902 Richmond Cavill introduced the front crawl to the Western world. In 1908, the world swimming association, Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA), was formed. Butterfly was developed in the 1930s and was at first a variant of breaststroke, until it was accepted as a separate style in 1952. |
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Competition
Competitive swimming became popular in the nineteenth century. The goal of competitive swimming is to constantly improve upon one's time(s), or to beat the competitors in any given event. However, some professional swimmers who do not hold a national or world ranking are considered the best in regard to their technical skills. Typically, an athlete goes through a cycle of training in which the body is overloaded with work in the beginning and middle segments of the cycle, and then the workload is decreased in the final stage as the swimmer approaches the competition in which he or she is to compete in. This final stage is often referred to as "shave and taper"; the swimmer tapering down his or her workload to be able to perform at their optimal level. At the very end of this stage, before competition, the swimmer shaves off all exposed hair for the sake of reducing drag and having a sleeker and more hydrodynamic feel in the water.
Swimming is an event at the Summer Olympic Games, where male and female athletes compete in 16 of the recognized events each. Olympic events are held in a 50-meter pool, called a long course pool.
There are forty officially recognized individual swimming events in the pool; however the International Olympic Committee only recognizes 32 of them. The international governing body for competitive swimming is the Fédération Internationale de Natation ("International Swimming Federation"), better known as FINA. |
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Regular practice and competition swimwear
Men
Men's most used practice swimwear include briefs and jammers. Males generally swim barechested.There has been much controversy after the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, when many Olympic swimmers broke records an unprecedented number of times using revolutionary swimsuits. To highlight the issue, note that it is rare to break world records, but in 2008, 70 world records were broken in one year, and 66 Olympic records were broken in one Olympic Games (there were races in Beijing where the first five finishers were swimming faster than the old world record). Despite many of his records having been won in these suits, Michael Phelps stated that he might boycott the competition after his record was beaten by another swimmer with a more advanced suit.
As of New Year's Day 2010, men are only allowed to wear suits from the waist to above the knees.They are also only permitted to wear one piece of swimwear; they cannot wear speedos underneath jammers. This rule was enacted after the controversy in the Beijing Olympics and Rome World Championships.
Women
Women wear one-piece suits with different backs for competition, though there are two-piece suits that can be worn to compete as well. Backs vary mainly in strap thickness and geometric design. Most common styles include: racerback, axel back, corset, diamondback, and butterfly-back/Fly-Back. There are also different style lengths: three-quarter length (reaches the knees), regular length (shoulders to hips), and bikini style (two-piece). Also as of New Year's 2010, in competition, women are only allowed to wear suits that do not go past the knees or shoulders.
Use of Drag
Drag suits are used for increasing the resistance against the swimmer in order to help adjust the swimmer to drag. This way, when swimmers switch back to normal practice suits they swim faster as a result of feeling less resistance. They are not normally worn during competitions.
Drag shorts like drag suits are worn in training and are also used to increase drag so that when taken off in racing it feels easier and the wearer feels less resistance. Other forms of drag wear include nylons, old suits, and T-shirts; the point is to increase friction in the water to build strength during training, and increase speed once drag items are removed for competition.Swimmers also shave areas of exposed skin before end-of-season competitions to reduce friction in the water. It is especially common for women to discontinue the traditional removal of leg hair at least a month before end-of-season competitions. This can be viewed as an additional form of drag because drag is most importantly about mental training and how one feels in the water. Freshly shaven skin feels much smoother and less resistant in comparison when in water. The presence of leg and arm hair will make very little difference physically in a swimmer’s overall performance, but mentally it has been known to have a very large effect.The mental aspect of wearing drag is critical because the goal is to feel your best in the water on race day. Drag makes a swimmer feel slower and more resistant during training with the added friction. Then on the day of the competition, a shaven swimmer wearing only a fast competition suit will feel a drastic and noticeable improvement in how fast and smooth they feel in the water. As in every other sport, mental training is just as important as physical training. |
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Health and skin care
It is recommended that swimmers wear waterproof sunscreen to meets and daytime swim practices that are outside to prevent sunburns. It is also recommended that swimmers dry off well between events at meets and change into dry clothes as soon as possible after swimming to prevent rashes and skin infections.
It also is important for pool water to be properly maintained to avoid rashes and skin infections.
Swimmers should shower with mild soap after swimming to remove pool chemicals such as chlorine and salt. Swimmers should use goggles to protect the eyes from pool water and improve underwater vision. |
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