It was almost exactly 500 years ago that Leonardo daVinci  had a striking insight into how birds fly that influenced the Wright brothers 400 years later and established the principles that govern aircraft design to this day.

Not a bad insight. And one that can benefit our swimming as well.

In the late 15th Century, daVinci  was the first to make scientific observations on the nature of flight. After studying birds in flight, he sketched several concepts for "flying machines." Initially these featured beating wings of various shapes – helical,batwing, etc. Through trial and — mostly — error he concluded that no amount of "wing shaping" would ever make human-powered flight possible. He then turned his focus from wing-beating flight to gliding flight.

What changed his mind was the realization that the most important function of a bird’s wings aren’t beating the air. but extending the glide. Because flight requires so much energy,  birds spend most of their non-flying time "refueling." Thus evolution led inevitably to shaping wings — and everything else – for maximal gliding distance with minimal effort.

 

 Evolution, of course, has affected humans in different ways. If our ancestors  had spent as much time swimming as birds did flying, over the course of millenia, there’s no doubt our swimming would much more closely resemble bird flight, because air and water are both fluid mediums. In both, the most important factor limiting speed and increasing energy cost is how air and water molecules slow us down — via drag.  

However, we can still  learn to swim as birds fly by consciously using our limbs while swimming more like birds use theirs while flying. Doing so requires an awareness that, as land animals, we tend instinctively to use our limbs in a similar manner to how we use them on land.

E.G. Bird legs  evolved to facilitate flight, while ours evolved to facilitate walking which makes them — mostly — "inconvenient" for efficient swimming. And our land-bred swimming instincts–like daVinci’s instincts about flying–lead to using our arms as tools for "water-beating."

To swim like birds in flight humans must learn to use their limbs more consciously to get water molecules to resist you less and cooperate with you more. In freestyle that means replacing the land-bred emphasis on pulling and kicking with:

(1) Get your legs to streamline behind your body, rather than using them to "beat" the water.  Lesson One of Easy Freestyle teaches this.

 (2) Think more consciously about using your arms to lengthen your "vessel" and "separate" water molecules Lessons Two and Three, respectively, teach this. You don’t stop using your arms for propulsion; instead you think more like  daVinci about their purpose and concentrate more on minimizing resistance than on maximizing propulsion.

 This picture of TI Coach Fiona Laughlin illustrates both principles:

 As do these of TI Coaches Shinji Takeuchi and Terry Laughlin, taken during the production of the Outside the Box DVD.