Main

 
The Water Zone - Technical
The Water Zone supports Freedom of Speech The Water Zone technical Send e-mail
go

What to drink on poolside
Want to know what you should fill your drinks bottle with? Below, you'll find reviews on some of the top energy drinks on the supermarket shelves, compared with some cheaper alternatives.

Lucozade -NRG, and sport

NRG

This has a very orangey fruity type flavour, and it wasn't too expensive either. I didn't really notice any effect in my performance, but it was quite refreshing. The problem with this drink is that it is fizzy and can give you cramp if you drink it just before you swim.

Sport

This comes in two flavours, orange and lime. It was also quite cheap, and it was refreshing too. This drink it quite sweet, but this just adds to it's flavour. It isn't fizzy, so it is an ideal poolside drink

Red Bull

The first thing that hits you when you take a mouth full of Red Bull, is the Sugar. It is very sweet, and tangy. It livens you up, and makes you feel very energetic which is good. It is fizzy though, so it is best drunk about an hour before you swim. It also conatins large amounts of caffiene, which can cause you to fail drugs tests at higher leavals of swimming. At 99p a can, it isn't by any means cheap.

Virgin Energy

Virgin Energy, was quite cheap to buy. It too is a fizzy drink and so shouldn't be drunk just before you swim. It had a tangy orange taste, but didn't really make a difference in my performance. Virgin Energy, is quite a new drink, and so will probably take a while to get noticed. Look out for it's yellow can on the supermarket shelves.

These sports drinks, are good to have just before a competition, but are they a good thing to drink during training? Probably not, as to buy enough cans of the drink to last you a week of training would cost a fortune. So what should we drink when we're training? Well, I found that the best thing to drink was a cordial, they quench your thirst and more importantly, replace the lost fluid. They are also cheap to buy. Any cordials do the job, it's just a matter of what flavour you like. I quite like Tesco's sugar free tropical drink, it is good, as it doesn't rot your teeth. For a change though, you could try Robinson's Fruit and Barley summer fruits, this is also sugar free. Well, there are a few ideas on what to put in your drinks bottle, and remember, in an hour you can loose up to a litre of fluid, so when you go swimming, go well prepared!

Back to top....

New style breaks records
Something strange happened on the way to Misty Hyman's first world record. At the Canadian open championships in Saint Foy, Quebec, the American teenager took the plunge in the l00m butterfly, disappeared from view and drew gasps from the crowd as she surfaced 24 metres later, well up on her rivals. Hyman then took one obligatory stroke into the turn, before diving once more. She took 16 strokes in the entire race, where most take more than 40.

Result: 58.29sec, a world short-course record by 0.39sec. But it was not that she spent so long under water that caused a stir that had been done be-fore, most impressively by Denis Pankratov, the world-record-holding Russian. Rather it was that Hyman, 17, had perfected the art of submarinery, adding a twist to her tail-end by tuning on her side under water. Instead of the dolphin-kick she was now mimicking other marine life,. the weave through water a lateral movement, or as Hyman and her coach Bob Gillett called it, the "fish-kick"

Officials concluded that Hyman had changed the basics of butterfly without giving cause for disqualification. She had cut out the drag and turbulence caused by the restrictions of swimming in pools to create conditions more akin to open water. The theory is that a swimmer can fill the water with energy-releasing vortices in much the same way that fish utilise spinning eddies, created by their movement through the water to boost speed.

After reading an article on how fish swim, Gilleft told Hyman to turn on her side when dolphin-kicking under water. The Idea was that the eddies she created would generate continuous energy without being interrupted by running into the surface of the water above or the bottom of the pool.

Gillett tested his theory by releasing food-colouring be-hind Hyman as she swam. The coloured clouds revealed vortices up to loft wide, a greater distance than that fiom Hyiaan's body to the surface or bottom of the pool when she is dolphin-kicking under water on her front in traditional fashion.

Gillett, who discovered by accident that Hyman travelled quicker under water than on the surface, said it became apparent to him "that there was a great amount of energy swirling beneath the surface", energy that was not only being lost but causing turbulence.

To perfect the action, Gillett put Hyman through many hours of kicking on her side while wearing a monofin, a giant flipper into which both feet fit.

Some coaches argue that Hyman goes into "oxygen debt and suffers late in races as consequence. Fortunately, she is already well clear of most rivals after 20 to 30 metres (she swims up to 35m underwater in a 50m - that is, Olympic -pool). Gillett believes the oxygen needed "at cellular level for a l00m race is already in the body. The problem, he says, carbon dioxide build-up, which "causes the pain many people cannot tolerate; we train Misty to tolerate that".

The technical committee Fina, the sport's governing body, restricted underwater starts to 15m on backstroke 1988. Some feel a restriction due on butterfly. Hyman is not in favour of that. "We'll see ourselves short if we limit it on butterfly," she said. "Don't break the rules, but push the to the limit."

Back to top....

Netscape Now!
This page is best viewed with a graphic enabled browser

Copyright The Water Zone 1997
Please e-mail all comments and criticism to the webmaster