Making a Bow Wave

This Swimsmooth blog has a wonderful demo by Paul Newsome in the video at the end of the blog:

http://www.feelforthewater.com/2019/10/why-do-you-get-sore-neck-from-swimming_25.html

You can see that the heavy work that he does underwater thrusts the body forward along it's straight path like a missile. This creates a super bow wave.

I think he may be stroking a bit slower to enable this but then it's an argument for working on distance per stroke.

[quote="cottmiler"]
I think he may be stroking a bit slower to enable this but then it's an argument for working on distance per stroke.
[/quote]

Whenever the bow wave is discussed, it seems every coach assumes that it is the same as with a boat.
And so only the speed should matter, while the way how the speed is created does not matter for the bow wave.
The faster you swim, the larger the bow waves, and the deeper the trough (and the easier the breathing). And this should be completely independent of whether you reach the speed with few or many strokes.

Two remarks:

1. What one sees in the video, I believe is clear overgliding: a long pause, without much propulsion (and the kick is non-propulsive).

2. The bow wave is a clear separator between slow and fast swimming. And rather slow swimming (the 50m in more than 60s, perhaps) is a very different thing.
Say, swimming the 50m with 40s or faster, I never worry about breathing, except for minimising the head movement. And with this speed already you only need to rotate the head a bit.
This of course also depends on your horizontal position: the more you sprint the higher in the water you are.

Perhaps in that video-clip Paul wanted to clearly *show* the bow wave, and thus gets into the overgliding. Not to disturb the viewing of the wave by arm movements.