Tarzan Skills: How to Swim, Dive, Climb, and Swing Like the Lord of the Apes

     

For nearly 100 years, Tarzan of the Apes has entertained and captivated men in print, radio, and film. To men who feel locked in an iron cage of corporate and suburban life, Tarzan represents the possibility of harnessing their primal side and escaping into the wild to revitalize their man spirit. In fact, the character’s creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, created the Tarzan character as an act of liberation from his disappointing and boring life. In an interview, Burroughs acknowledged this motivation:

“We wish to escape not alone the narrow confines of city streets for the freedom of the wilderness, but the restrictions of man-made laws, and the inhibitions that society has placed upon us. We like to picture ourselves as roaming free, the lords of ourselves and of our would; in other words, we would each like to be Tarzan. At least I would; I admit it.”

Tarzan represents the idealized “noble savage.” The son of British nobility, he is adopted and raised by a tribe of apes when his parents are marooned and die on the coast of West Africa. Tarzan later meets an American woman, Jane, whom he takes as his wife, and the two attempt to make a normal life for themselves in England. But the chafing constraints and galling hypocrisies of civilized society drive Tarzan back to the jungle. Virtuous, heroic, and athletic, only the wilderness offered the freedom and adventure that felt like home.

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When Burroughs introduced Tarzan in a pulp magazine in 1912, he created one of the first superheroes in America. Tarzan developed special talents and abilities that allowed him to survive and thrive in the jungle. He could climb trees and swing from branches in the jungle just as quickly and deftly as the apes who raised him. Unlike his monkey “family,” Tarzan was a skilled swimmer which turned him into an amphibious killer. He’d dive from staggering heights and swim great distances. In addition to his physical gifts, Tarzan developed several mental talents. He could learn new languages in days and could even speak with animals.

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Boys and men at the turn of the 20th century wanted to emulate Tarzan the Ape Man. Tarzan’s physical prowess has inspired men for nearly 100 years to get in shape and harness their inner wild man. Today, we’re giving a short primer on developing four of Tarzan’s key skills: swimming, diving, climbing, and swinging. While you may never need to swing from a vine to save your lady or climb a tree to save your own life, it’s good to know you could if you had to!

How to Swim Like Tarzan

In Tarzan movies, a frequent scene is that of the Ape Man diving into a river and swimming briskly to fight an alligator that’s circling Jane. Tarzan engages in an underwater battle with the giant reptile and defeats it by snapping its neck or stabbing it with a knife. But to get to the alligator before it eats his lady, Tarzan has to swim fast.

In the movies, Tarzan always uses the front crawl stroke (what we often call the freestyle). And with good reason. The front crawl (aka the forward, American or Australian crawl) is the fastest and most efficient of all the swim strokes. Swimming is such an essential Tarzan skill that the movie producers back in the 1930s brought in Johnny Weissmuller, a five-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, to play the role of Tarzan.

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The technique for the Tarzan front crawl is pretty basic. Float face down in the water with both arms stretched out in front of you. This is the starting position. Flutter your legs alternately in short, up and down thrashes. The arms move in alternating sweeping strokes. The arm movement can be broken down into three parts: pull, push, and recovery.

Lower your hand into the water so that your thumb enters first. This is called “catching the water” and prepares you for the pull. The pull movement follows a semicircle pattern under the water. It ends at the front of the chest, as seen here:

The push begins when your hand reaches about where your ribcage is. You’ll feel your palm pushing the water behind you, instead of pulling it towards you. The push ends with your arm at the side of your body.

The recovery begins after the push. Bring your hand out of the water, bend your elbow, and circle your forearm outward until it points ahead. The arm glides out straight ahead to full reach in front.

While performing the front crawl keep your face in the water.

Breathing is done by twisting the head to one side, so that your face rises above the water surface. After taking in air, the face is submerged again and the swimmer exhales out his nose underwater. How often you breath depends on your personal preference. Some swimmers take in a breath every other arm stroke, while others will take in a breath every third arm stroke.

How to Dive Like Tarzan

Tarzan is constantly diving into rivers to save one of his monkey friends or his perennial damsel in distress, Jane. In Tarzan’s New York Adventure, he takes a death defying dive from the Brooklyn Bridge in order to escape the police, so he can save a jungle boy who was taken by the circus.

Diving headfirst into water allowed Tarzan to get to where he was going quickly. Plus it just looks cool to do a swan dive from a tree limb.

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August 7, 2010