Starting In the Water
This is a perspective from a diving coach who believes facilities should be built that can accommodate many aquatic activities not just competitive swimming and/or diving teams. It is my opinion that the National Governing Boards for both swimming and diving may cause the demise of their activities in High Schools and recreational facilities. These governing boards recommend depths that seem unreasonable when looking at the level of competition in these pools. I have written many articles arguing this idea regarding springboard diving. Now I would like to put swimming in the spotlight. In particular, the use of starting blocks and procedures that make it impossible to build an affordable pool for general/recreational and competitive use.
I can remember an era back in the 1950’s when swimmers were using a belly flop dive at the start of a race. I can’t remember hearing of a catastrophic injury at that time. The pools were shallower and not many standards were in effect for the use of starting blocks and water depths. In the 1970’s injuries began surfacing at the starting end of the pool. These injuries occurred by swimmers either falling off the blocks or doing something strange rather than seriously focusing on the start. This transpired because swimmers were allowed 2 false starts before being disqualified. To alleviate that problem, one false start was cause for an immediate disqualification. That seemed to make the meets run faster but didn’t reduce injuries because some swimmers were doing odd things in shallow water as they fell in before being disqualified.
Then in the 1980’s some swim coaches started playing with ideas to get the swimmer to jump further from the blocks. They used all kinds of techniques, from stringing a bungee cord or rope across the lanes, to jumping out of the bleachers over the deck into the water. Some swimmers hit their feet on the cord and were tipped at a steeper angle for entry into the water. The dives from the bleachers ended with swimmers either not making it to the water or diving at too steep an angle from a greater height. Some of these swimmers struck the pool bottom, which produced catastrophic injuries. Also around this time the pike scoop start was introduced with such disastrous results that it was banned in high school meets.
Today the emphasis on the start is a sharper entry angle than the old belly flop start so that the swimmer can add a dolphin kick to gain additional propulsion to the underwater glide. This is much the same as the intent of the old pike scoop start. Again another effort to get the swimmer further away from the blocks before the first stroke begins. All of these things were/are the focus of a minor portion of any race. In reality the most a swimmer would pick up would be a couple of tenths of a second. It would seem more productive, prudent and safer to focus this energy on proper stroke mechanics, turns, push offs and streamlining during starts and turns. The rationale is that there are more strokes, turns and the opportunity to streamline out of those turns than the one time start. None of these areas would produce the problems related to diving from the starting platform into shallow water.
High schools have made many changes over the years including placement of the blocks and their varying heights, which seems to me to create more potential problems than before. Some pools have already been made deeper to accommodate a potential depth increase for high schools while other were able to move the start to the deep end. Schools have spent a fortune on high starting blocks then switching to low blocks and even relocating blocks to deeper water and adding extensions to lane lines to swim meters instead of yards. A move to six feet of water at the starting end will cause these schools to eliminate the starting blocks and start in the water. They have run out of options and finances.
The National Governing Board’s (US Swimming) six foot recommendation will make many pools ineffective for learn to swim programs because the learner will not be able to touch the bottom. Currently there are some pools where a moveable bottom can be set to vary the depth. Going back to the opening statement, "How can local organizations afford this when contemplating a new facility?" The USOC and United States Swimming are only concerned with our National and International competitors. What they don’t realize is that all swimmers are not "World Class" or "Olympic" caliber swimmers. Furthermore they don’t realize the affect it has on the grass root programs. Also the venue built for the Olympics Games held in Spain was closed because the locals couldn’t afford to operate it.
I will state that the current "four foot depth is safe for starting blocks as long as swimmers do a "belly flop or near belly flop dive". The rationale comes from a video by a high school coach of swimmers diving from blocks. The observation was that as the swimmer reached the deepest point of penetration, the head and upper body were already moving away from the bottom. The distance between the swimmer and the bottom was a foot and a half to 2 feet. This observation occurred from a dive in three and a half foot deep pools. All of the governing boards neglect to understand the difference in skill levels and abilities. The start that an Olympian makes will not be the same as that of a beginner. The depth of the pool should serve as the guide to what is and what is not taught. That should be part of the safety emphasis given by and to coaches. Continuing with a blanket depth recommendation will see the demise of starting blocks in non-Olympic swimming pools. That means swimmers will either start in the water or not swim at all. Some high school coaches will not like this because without a start from the blocks, their team will be handicapped in contests. The handicap is that their swimmers will have little to no exposure to starting blocks when they have to compete in a pool that supports the use of blocks.
It should be noted that this also applies to recreational facilities as well. Competitive teams do utilize these facilities in some areas of the country. Those facilities not only teach people how to swim but also teach various types of swim aerobics where the patrons stand or run on the pool bottom. As the National Governing Boards seek better facilities for National and International competitions, they are insensitive or oblivious to the fact that many pools will not ever meet the new suggested depths. Will those facilities close down? I don’t think so. They just won’t support competitive swimming with the use of starting blocks.
The irony is that a new study has surfaced that seems to show it is not necessary to encourage deeper starting ends. It surmises that it is better and faster for the swimmer to get in the water earlier and not dive up and out as far as they have been. It seems to be suggesting that going back to a flat start (the belly flop or near belly flop dive) from the blocks produces more speed than the starts that have been used up to now. As the safety effort catches up with the statistics of shallow end starts, suggestions of deepening the starting end may not be necessary. If that is the case then remodeling swimming facilities may not be necessary and facility owner/operators can concentrate on multi-use facilities and programs without special concern for competitive swimming.