- Harvard University coach Joe Bernal realized that some of his swimmers were faster if they stayed underwater and dolphin kicked. This is essentially identical to the fish kick, except that the swimmer is flat on his stomach, rather than turned on his side. Some especially strong underwater swimmers stayed submerged almost the entire length of the pool, since there was no rule against it. That all changed in 1998, when FINA, the world governing body of competitive swimming, ruled that swimmers performing the backstroke had to surface after 15 meters.
That's a cool story. What other sports have had to change the rules because of innovation? I think recumbent bicycles are prohibited at most races. The Fosbury Flop was not banned and became the standard.
I couldn't find a lot of information about the fish kick, but there are a few good videos. The mako has all the humans beat.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLII_I8EvTCpYy7S0Uwd8JSzykEm0YuG2w
American football had to change its rules because people were dying. The wedge formation was fully legal and incredibly dangerous:
- The 1894 Harvard-Yale game, known as the "Hampden Park Blood Bath", resulted in crippling injuries for four players; the contest was suspended until 1897. The annual Army-Navy game was suspended from 1894 to 1898 for similar reasons.[62] One of the major problems was the popularity of mass-formations like the flying wedge, in which a large number of offensive players charged as a unit against a similarly arranged defense. The resultant collisions often led to serious injuries and sometimes even death.[63] Georgia fullback Richard Von Albade Gammon notably died on the field from concussions received against Virginia in 1897
Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and the schools created the NCAA and legalized the forward pass.
Also, at some point MLB had to formally ban the use of aluminum bats to protect the records in a largely numbers oriented game. Although they don't seem to want to single out cheaters who have records aside from informal bans to the Hall of Fame.
- a large number of offensive players charged as a unit against a similarly arranged defense
Wow, back in the days when footballers were footballers. While they survived.
Wikipedia says the formation wasn't exactly banned in collegiate football, but linking arms was prohibited. "Professional and Canadian football went still farther in theoretically not allowing any transfer of momentum between teammates in blocking, but that prohibition is not strictly enforced."
Tennis has also had to evolve. thenewgreen, did you see the article showing how the power game changed the grass wear patterns at Wimbledon?
This is from the John McEnroe / Bjorn Borg final in 1980.
And this is during Nadal/Berdych in 2010.
No, I'll check out the article, but it's a shame, don't you think? The net game of a guy like McEnroe was really something to behold. Such amazing reflexes. Thanks for the link.
"A tennis monoculture." wasoxygen, when we play you'll not have to worry about your side of the net drying out. I'll be placing shots all over the place :)
We used to do this for fun in swim practice on our sides like that, and with fins on it's very easy to do what this person is doing at that speed. We always started races like this, the first 10-15 yards of the race were done out of your dive, under water doing fly kick. This is honestly just proper technique for fly, if you aren't activating your whole core, you're exerting more energy than you need. I always had a single kick butterfly stroke, not the 1.5 that most people do and you are supposed to come almost out of the water over your waves every time. This is why my butterfly was always faster than my freestyle, 46.4 second 100 fly vs. 48.17 freestyle. Butterfly is a faster stroke, it is just that no one can really hold pace with such a demanding stroke.
It's also a ton of core activation you aren't used to, like every other muscle group, it takes time to build up useable strength.
I swam in high school very recently, and no one on my team ever thought of something like this. Truly incredible.