Donald Pirrie, Coach, Cedar Rapids, Iowa: “Thanks, I had an older Canon Optura Camera that I tried last night and it worked great and the video quality from the Power Cam is outstanding.”

Jeff Johnson, Patriot Swim Club, Leonminster, MA: ”This is one of the best coaching tools I have ever had.”

Bob Hoskins, Pope John High School, Sparta, N.J.: “ I have had your Power Cam since 1999 and it is great. I am the stroke coach for a high school team and devote all my time to underwater videotaping using your device.  Not only is it easy to use and it produces great quality images but it is easy to transport.  Since I take it daily from my home to the pool, that is an important feature".

INDEPENDENT PRODUCT REVIEW

STRENGTH AND POWER

By Phillip Whitten

Swimming World— September 2005

The following tools for converting strength to power in the water are the latest weapons in the swimmer’s arsenal against the clock and, no doubt, they will be instrumental in lowering world records still further.

Competitive swimming is a never-ending quest to swim faster, more powerfully and more efficiently.

In the early years of the sport, vast improvements were made with increased efficiency in stroke technique, the simple reduction in drag and new training methods that featured increased yardage— all resulting in better-conditioned, more efficient swimmers. Thus, swimming records dropped precipitously during the first eight decades of the 20th century.

As swimmers became more efficient and as worldwide communication increased, enabling coaches in previously marginal areas to become fully educated and up-to-date on the latest theories, applications and training methods, two things happened:

•Improvements began coming in smaller increments—tenths or hundredths of a second, rather than chunks of seconds.

•World-class swimmers began popping up all over the world.

But the quest for faster swimming continues unabated. Some improvements appear to have come from technological advances in the materials from which swim suits and caps are made.

In recent years, the decades-long trend toward ever-skimpier swimsuits has been reversed with the introduction of “body suits,” designed, their manufacturers say, to make swimmers more streamlined in the water and to decrease resistance.

Other improvements have come from identifying body types ideally suited to swimming—and to the four competitive strokes—and from the efforts to build better swimmers: quicker, more efficient, more explosive, stronger and more powerful.

Naturally, tools are needed to help build these superswimmers, and human ingenuity has been up to the task. Here, Swimming World Magazine will quickly review three tools built explicitly for the purpose of creating superswimmers: the Power Rack, the Power Tower..MORE