I watch lap swimmers and many have difficulty learning the breastroke kick. When they swim breastroke, the kick is off. Freestyle and backstroke not nearly the same problems. Butterfly is also difficult to master. As someone who has swim both fly and breastroke, sometimes I fell that *** is harder on you than fly. And in my middle years I'm more of a breastroker. What do you think? Which one is harder?
Parents
Former Member
Any stroke can be hard or easy depending on how you swim it. If you are talking about the physical demands of just doing the stroke - butterfly is harder. By this I mean the fact of doing the stroke where your arms recover above or right the surface of the water compared to breatstroke where your recovery is underwater. Look at the swimmers in the pool, you will generally see plain lap/fitness swimmers doing breastroke , sometimes face out of the water going leisurely down the pool, yet I don't think I have seen someone doing a leisurely butterfly (unless you count Walt Pfieffer who use to swim 100's of butterfly in 50m pool with a long sleeve shirt on to protect his back from the sun). Even your swim training programs (Amercian Red Cross) call breastroke a relaxing stroke (also elementary backstroke and sidestroke). I would agree that breastroke can be harder on the body, primarily the knees because the movement is a little unnatural. My own personal choice, I would gladly swim any race over a 200 fly.
Any stroke can be hard or easy depending on how you swim it. If you are talking about the physical demands of just doing the stroke - butterfly is harder. By this I mean the fact of doing the stroke where your arms recover above or right the surface of the water compared to breatstroke where your recovery is underwater. Look at the swimmers in the pool, you will generally see plain lap/fitness swimmers doing breastroke , sometimes face out of the water going leisurely down the pool, yet I don't think I have seen someone doing a leisurely butterfly (unless you count Walt Pfieffer who use to swim 100's of butterfly in 50m pool with a long sleeve shirt on to protect his back from the sun). Even your swim training programs (Amercian Red Cross) call breastroke a relaxing stroke (also elementary backstroke and sidestroke). I would agree that breastroke can be harder on the body, primarily the knees because the movement is a little unnatural. My own personal choice, I would gladly swim any race over a 200 fly.
