More from knackered downunder

One explanation for American and Australian sporting achievement is their preparedness to look at new methods and throw away the old. It’s all about the search for the next revolution.

Milt Nelms – an American performance enhancer and with whom former champion Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe trained last year – says he’s developed a new stroke, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

It’s all about a swimmer’s posture, brain, instincts, and guiding the swimmer to be aware of how every muscle and bone should feel, when they are making the most efficient natural fast stroke for their body shape, the newspaper says.

Nelms won’t say too much of his method – seeing it as “intellectual property” – but says we should be going back to the days before all the science came into the sport, and “look at what people do when they are performing in the water in a way that their body wants to rather than the way it’s told to,” the SMH reports.

Thorpe himself has endorsed the so-far secretive approach: “I love the stroke. I believe if swimming is to move forwards, the Milt Nelms holistic approach is the only way to go.”

“It’s … the only way that swimming is going to get significantly faster. It’s not going to come from the person who has the capacity to swim more kilometres in training,” Thorpe says in the SMH.

“I believe we should throw out all the training, and start over again. Or, at least, have a conversation about it,” he says. The classic posture of champion swimmers out of the pool – slouching rounded shoulders and bow-shaped back – is forbidden under Nelms, the SMH says.

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