After recently experiencing problems with rings impeding my keeping my fingers closed when swimming, i began to wonder which was a better approach, finger together or fingers apart when you are swimming?
In general, we tend to assume the hand acts like a paddle, therefore fingers together must be better. I was amazed with the results that I discovered, particularly when I tried this myself.
The Swim smooth forum was my first port of call.
THE VERDICTS:
1. Fingers together may create tension in your arm – tension is not good, and will prevent you performing at your best.
This was, however, merely an opinion. I feel it is necessary to locate the science behind it.
2. Slightly relaxed gently spaced seems to be the preferred consensus.
This seems to produce a greater surface area, therefore creating greater propulsion and there is very strong research to back this up too. Here’s the evidence:
in a study of front crawl; finger spread(pdf)"It was determined with 95% confidence that a finger spread of 10°creates more stroke force than a fingers-together configuration across all pitch angles tested.’"A further study into the optimum finger spacing for swimming (pdf) states that they "show, through computational fluid dynamics(CFD of a 3D model of the hand, that an optimal finger spacing (121,roughly corresponding to the resting hand posture) increases the drag coefficient (+8.8%), which is ‘functionally equivalent’ to a greater hand palm area, thus alowerstroke frequency can produce the same thrust, with benefits to muscle, hydraulic and propulsive efficiencies’"The attached picture is what made it clearest. It shows that there is a lot of water escaping through the wider spaced fingers, which is what I found when I tried it. It also shows that the narrow and slightly spaced fingers are in fact not that different with reference to water flow, which I found quite surprising. The vortex can clearly be seen too.
The study into optimum finger spacing (pdf) explains that "Large vortices develop at the closest finger spacing, resulting in a strong back flow increasing the pressure on the dorsal surface of the hand, thus decreasing the pressure differential on the hand and the overall pressure drag. At the optimal spacing, water jets produced between the fingers prevent the formation of the vortex and contribute, via a reduced backflow toward the dorsal side of the hand, to create a stagnation region with the consequent increase in the drag force". (pdf)
Conclusion:
The mid spaced fingers are the best, back vortices are created with closed fingers, and too much water escapes between wide spaced fingers.
In future, I think I will be worth trying the new, slightly spaced approach. Take a look at Michael Phelps swimming, he adopts the gently spaced fingers approach too, you will notice.
Sources
Sidelnik, N and Young, B (2006) 'Optimising the freestyle swim stroke: the effect of finger spread' Sports engineering vol 9, 129-135 [online, available http://www.springerlink.com/content/j3m844150606v846/fulltext.pdf?page=1]
Minetti, A. et al (2009) 'Optimum finger spacing ni human swimming' Journal of Biomechanics vol 42 2188-2190 [online, available http://www.posetech.com/FORUM/finger_spacing.pdf]
Melanie Ryding - Melanie writes on a range of topics, her main interest lying in health, fitness, weight management and sport
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