Now I will stir the pot, everyone should have the latest Swim magazine, with the great woman breaststroker from San Diego. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well several photos are showing her doing the breathing and pull wrong, again in my opinion. She is coming up way high and the head and eyes are looking down the pool. I call that swimming like a woman, or Amanda Beards old style. Even Brandon mentions he tries to get her to look down.
More and more women now swim breaststroke like the men, head down at all times and not coming up very high. Remember for every inch the head comes up the hips will sink two inches. I went to a development meet in November, the young hot shots. Only one girl in the entire group swam with a high head position.
Any comments?
This will be a real interesting year for swimmming. There will be a lot of world records broken in trials and the Olympics. In my opinion all the mens breaststroke records are soft. It may take a 58 and 2:07+ to win the mens gold. The women have developed the speed they need this last year. A 1:04 and 2:20+ is possible.
Any comments?
Former Member
Well, I not certain if changing her style to a wave breaststroke really helped her. She was swimming at the 1:04 to 106 range without it. I agree Amanda use to have a high style. I swim more level but my *** style is more the style that they swam back in the 1970's. It would be interesting if she replys to you on her style.
Yes, I agree with you *** times have changed the most in the past 30 years. I wonder what would happen if breaststrokers were able to do more than one pull and kick after the turn if they could go out 15 meters like fly and back swimmers. Breaststrokers as many older swimmers know at one could swim a 100 meters completely underwater. That was changed to prevent people from passing out from no breathing. The rules on this have not been changed in about 40 years.
I make all my swimmers swim the wave style breaststroke for full lengths underwater, exactly as if they were on the surface. They are really fast.
Actually the fastest underwater stroke would be if you were allowed to just kick to the surface, but the rules require a pull down first.
I have modified the pulldown by doing a regular wave pull underwater and then a kick to the surface. That mens the hands only come to the front of the face and then forwards. Also it is important to have a narrow kick to the surface. A wide kick causes too much de-acceleration. A narrow kick keeps the speed underwater up and gets you to the surface faster with more total speed.
Cynthia, I hope you are at least putting your head down. You don't have to do the wave to take advantage of the rules.
When my swimmers are keeping their heads up too much, I make them swim like we had to do in the 60's and 70's, head always up. They hate it, calling it cruel and inhumane punishment:D
Hi Wayne, I'm a frequent reader of your web site's articles. Question for you regarding ankles. What are some dryland exercises you would recommend to master swimmers to increase ankle flexibility. Of course this would be for the breaststroke.
Thanks.
I personally do not do any exercises for ankle flexibility. I can only turn my feet about 75 degrees from straight. Some can turn their feet 90 degrees from straight.
Mike Barrowman and others used to sit on their ankles with the ankles turned out. I recommend sitting is a hot tub, drink some wine, then turn the ankles out:D
I'm no breaststroke expert, but it's my favorite stroke. When I do the wave breaststroke at race speed, my hands are always over the surface. When I swim slowly, it's at or just under the water surface.
For a while there, I didn't even know that I was swimming wave style. I learned the fast mini-sculling by reading books and watching videos of expert breaststrokers. With the powerful insweep of the stroke, a hole in the water is created in front of the body. For me, this makes the recovery over the surface of the water.
Any thoughts on this, Wayne?
Regarding the statement below made by Wayne:
"I have modified the pulldown by doing a regular wave pull underwater and then a kick to the surface. That means the hands only come to the front of the face and then forwards. Also it is important to have a narrow kick to the surface. A wide kick causes too much de-acceleration. A narrow kick keeps the speed underwater up and gets you to the surface faster with more total speed."
If I read this correctly,
1. After a turn or a dive, your swimmers do a mini-outsweep and insweep and put the arms forward instead of to the side of the body.
2. Kick to the surface and do another pull to start the stroke.
Is this legal? According to the rules, it appears to be. Wayne, you are ahead of your time :-) It makes a lot of sense to me, definitely minimizes the drag.
I agree, it would be worth giving up some distance if the average speed that you breakout at is faster. Have you used this modified pullout in a race? If so, which one? When you say the distances are nearly the same when compared to the conventional pullout, are you talking inches or feet? Do you have any wall-to-15-yard times to compare the two with? I realize the answer to these are going to depend on the individual but if have any more info on this I'd be interested in hearing it.
Ian,
My normal race pull out to when my head breaks the surface is 13-15 yards in the 200 breaststroke. I will continue to use the old, long pulldown for the 200. Once in a while I can get 20 yards from the start.
My normal race pull out to when my head breaks the surface is 11-12 yards in the 50 breaststroke. Using the *** scull pullout technique I loose 0.5 yards. But to the 15 yard mark I am about 0.5 seconds faster.:D That is a lot to cut. I do end up with one more complete stroke per length, but I will take the time off. When I am in shape I can do 12.6 for 25 yards from a dive, using the conventional pulldown. I hope to get that down to 12.3 this year.
My big problem was at no time in the last year have I been in shape. The most I swam in any one month was 5 workouts. There were 6 months with no workouts. It looks like I made top 10 in LCM last year with no workouts for 3 months, I just showed up at a meet and swam.:p But I never lose technique for the start, underwater stroke and the stroke itself. But I also slow down real fast. My 100 times are 10 seconds slower than what my 50 times would indicate. The 200 times were worse.
Bottom line you have to work out even for the 50 ***!
