The “Combat Side Stroke” is an adaptation and evolution of the sidestroke for the military.
So what is the “non-combat” side stroke?
The origin of side stroke
The side stroke was an innovative swimming technique developed in the 1800s, when many other swimming techniques were still being tried. It became widely popular because of its ability to swim long distances in a very energy-efficient manner. Over the next century, improvements were made to make swimming faster and easier, and by the early 1900s, it was the fastest swimming technique of its time and took the swimming world by storm.
Later, however, it would be supplanted by the creation of “front crawl”.
The last years of the side stroke were sublimated into the Trudgen stroke, a type perfected by Englishman John Trudgen.
It has evolved aggressively while maintaining the early form of the side stroke and has changed so much that it can be considered the prototype of the front crawl.
At this point, it is no longer very suitable for swimming long distances in an energy-efficient manner.
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Arranged for the military use
Although the sidestroke has thus fallen out of competition, some people are paying renewed attention to its ability to swim long distances in an energy-efficient manner. The U.S. Navy SEALs.
They focused on the side stroke as an ideal swimming technique for long-distance and long-duration covert infiltration, as they envisioned the waterside environment, such as oceans and rivers, as their primary battleground.
It was optimized and evolved for the military by former SEAL Stew Smith and swimming coach Terry Laughlin into the Combat Sidestroke.
Since ancient times, there has been a Japanese swimming method (Nihon eihou) or a traditional swimming method (Koshiki eihou) that has developed mainly as a martial art, such as when warriors swam while wearing armor. (Reference:Nihon eihou wikipedia)
The combat sidestroke may be said to be a swimming technique with the same ideology, in that it is performed by soldiers in combat uniforms with their equipment and rifles on.
