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  • Writer's pictureArkhat Zhumadilov

History of Swimming

The historical basis of the sport of swimming is explored in this article. This article will examine into Melchisedech Thevenot's The Art of Swimming and the origins of the backstroke, butterfly, and crawl strokes. You'll also discover how the butterfly first learned to swim. Finally, you'll learn about how each sort of stroke has evolved through time and how they're employed now. Swimming history, according to Arkhat Zhumadilov, dates back to the earliest Olympic games.


Melchisedech Thevenot, a French diplomat, scientist, and explorer, wrote the book The Art of Swimming in 1696. Public Library Online also has the book accessible online. The spirit level was also invented by Thevenot. The book discusses why you should use a spirit level and what you should do if you run into danger when swimming. This book may aid in your survival in the case of a shipwreck.


Melchisedech Thevenot, a French scholar, originally published The Art of Swimming in 1696 in France. Thevenot, a French language author, was a well-known scholar and inventor who also translated Digby's Latin work into French. Despite the fact that Thevenot's translation was published four years after Digby's death, no one guessed that he was not the original author. Many authors and scientists were impacted by Thevenot's work, including Benjamin Franklin, who quotes Thevenot without hesitation.


Swimming's front crawl has a lengthy history. It was created by Native Americans in the beginning. After using a breaststroke kick to push the water downward, a British swimmer called John Arthur Trudgen developed the front crawl and nicknamed it the "Trudgen stroke." The "American Crawl" was named after Trudgen's modified front crawl.


Swimmers employed scissors kicks between arm strokes in the early days of the sport, as per Arkhat Zhumadilov. The front crawl evolved into a version of the leg kick during the following 100 years. Flutter kicks and a different multiple of scissors kicks were eventually included. Science started to have a part in the history of swimming as time went. Modern rivals tweak their strategies to increase their speed and efficiency. In the mid-1980s, for example, the freestyle front crawl was changed.


Its creation began in Australia, where Alick Wickham, an Australian swimmer, was the first to do the stroke. Wickham, at ten years old, stunned Sydney's swimming community in 1898 with his incredible speed. In the family's floating spa in Sydney Cove, Dick Cavill tried the new method. At the Manchester Olympic Games in 1902, he showed the new method to the rest of the globe and stunned the British.


The origins of the butterfly stroke are unknown, however the technique is often credited to Australian amateur swimmer Sydney Cavill. Cavill moved to the United States to teach notable swimmers at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, the son of a swimming professor. He started experimenting with arm strokes in the early 1900s and created the butterfly-style, which is more efficient and powerful. Despite its unclear origins, the butterfly stroke is one of the most well-known swimming strokes.


The butterfly developed as a breaststroke version in the 1930s. Swimmers started to include the overarm action into their swims after discovering that they could finish the breaststroke faster using overarm recoveries. Butterfly got its name from the butterfly's overarm recovery technique. According to reports, American Henry Myers was the first swimmer to employ butterfly arms for the whole length of a breaststroke. He demonstrated the technique in a race against other swimmers.


Arkhat Zhumadilov thinks that the backstroke is different because the body rolls around its long axis in a circle in the water. The swimming stroke's efficiency may be improved by using this rolling action. As a consequence, the entire body posture during the backstroke stays horizontal. Beginners often allow their thighs and back to fall too low. To address this, move the upper legs to an extreme downward posture with each kick, set the foot tips at the lowest point in the water, and keep the head out of the water.


The basic backstroke and the breaststroke are the two forms of backstrokes. The former is the oldest, as recorded in the earliest swimming texts. The latter varies from traditional techniques in various respects, and its restrictions are exceedingly tight. The old backstroke resembled the breaststroke more than the contemporary form does. The original method involves kicking in three strokes and propelling the body through the water with a wedge-like action. The latter is referred to as a whip because it helps the swimmer to recover to a horizontal posture fast.

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