Swimming Speed.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

Swimming Speed.

What Weissmuller Says.—Arms

That Do the Work.

"Sure wc take our sports too seriously," said Johnny Weissmuller, once the greatest of all amateur swimmers, now being paid large sums of money to prove that Darwin was right, by leaping from limb to limb in the Hollywood jungles as "Tarzan." "Personally, 1 don't believe in what people call 'serious training,' meaning by that giving up all the mild pleasures of life and working yourself up to a high nervous tension, where every race is'a matter of life or death. "I think Maxev Rosenbloom, the boxer, has the right idea—get in good condition and then live the way you're accustomed to living. The thing that makes you a champion is your technique, not your condition. My idea of the way to keep in shape was to swim regularly —not for my wind, but for form. In other words, I practised —I didn't train. "I know what I'm talking about, too. I found it out when we were on those Olympic Games trip, and we were supposed to stop doing whatever it was we had been doing all our lives, and get to bed at certain hours and obey training rules that were designed for people who certainly weren't swimmers. "Success in swimming—and I'll bet it is true of a lot of other sports—lies in complete relaxation. I found out that when I went to bed at 9 o'clock I got nervous and all tied up, and I ne\er did as well in Olympic competition as I did at other times when I was just Johnny Weissmuller and acting natural." Glad Japanese Won. Weissmuller took a certain delight in the triumphs of the Japanese swimmers at the 1932 Olympic Games. And for a funny reason.

"You know." he said. "I arot sick and tired of having people look at me after I had broken records, and then say, 'Well, it's no wonder he wins all the races and holds all the records —look at that physique.' "They never gave old Bill Baclirach any credit for teaching me anything, and they never gave me any credit for finding out anything myself—l was just a champion because I had a big chest and lon» arms. "Now, I hated to see Americans get licked, and didn't like to sec my own records go by the board, but when a lot of little, short-legged and short-armed fellows like those Japanese boys came along and won everything it gave me a cluinco to have the last laugh on the people who said that I won bccause I had a certain kind of physique."

Weissmuller believes the Japanese swimmers were victorious because they were exceptionally well trained. Iheir complete relaxation and knowledge of exactly what they were doing was responsible for their success rather than any peculiarity of stroke or new discovery. "I heard a lot about their new 'leg drive' and other stuff, but I am here to tell you that swimming is done with the arms —and don't let anybody tell you different. Kicking gives a rhythm, and the better arm stroke a swimmer has tlio higher his feet come in the water and tho more power Tie seems to have in his legs—but that is just appearance. His legs look, good because his arms are good."

Johnny says the eight-beat crawl and the foot flutter are figments of the imagination largely—and a delusion and a snare anyhow.

"The old six-beat crawl is all anybody eni\ use with any success, and, as a matter of fact, don't forget that Arne Borg, of Sweden, the greatest distance swimmer of them all, only used a fourbeat crawl. The arms do the work and the feet get the credit."

Weissmuller says that although lie swims comparatively little, and doesn't "train" at all, in the sense that athletic coaches use the word, ho went out and swam a 100 yds time trial in 53s recently — and attributes it solely to the use of correct swimming form.

"Jlv advice is not to take athletics seriously," he said. "Learn your stuff and practice it to improve your technique—but if you have to quit living a normal life in order to be good —it isn't worth it."