Also make sure your head is back in the water before your arms finish their recovery.
Does this mean head in the water before hands are in the water? Or is it head in the water before hands are fully extended in front? (Or something else altogether?):confused:
Haven't heard this before but will give it a try. Seems to make sense - it keeps the head down (and the legs up).
It means breathing every two strokes. And the best way of doing that in fly is to swim mostly 25's and some 50's. There are a lot of us that have trouble with back and fly and some with ***. None said freestyle its probably because we do a lot of freestyle yardage and its not our worst stroke.
I have a lot of difficulty with the crawl. I've been working on it (whenever the limbs permit) for over a year. I can do the breathing, arms and legs individually, but if I try to do all three things at the same time, my brain will run out of RAM, and my operating system will crash. The motion just doesn't seem natural to me. My lane buddy, a septuagenarian multiple heart attack survivor, keeps trying to suggest I switch to tennis or racquetball, while passing me effortlessly.
I've tried to do exactly one butterfly stroke during my lifetime. (I had read about it in a book.) It caused a number nauseating crunching noises in the shoulder that I messed up back in college (don't ask). In the ensuing panic, I quickly switched to doggie-paddle. When the lifeguards saw this they threw in an emergency flotation device.
I am most comfortable with the *** stroke, which is not to say that I do it either fast or correctly. My head does go under water after a breath. Usually it comes back up before I take the next one.
Strange as it may seem, my least favorite stroke is freestyle. It's almost as; to me "freestyle is the opiate of the masses" In a workout, if it's all freestyle, it's not a real workout.
Originally posted by Scansy
Does this mean head in the water before hands are in the water? Or is it head in the water before hands are fully extended in front? (Or something else altogether?):confused:
Haven't heard this before but will give it a try. Seems to make sense - it keeps the head down (and the legs up).
It's hard to explain in words, but if you watch a good butterfly swimmer, their stroke is almost sinusoidal. I mean they roll up and down smoothly through the stroke. At the phase of the stroke where the arms are about to enter the water in front of your head, the head and shoulder should be diving somewhat. This forces the legs up in conjunction with the kick.
I've just noticed lately that people who struggle with fly aren't timing the breathing correctly. If your head is still out of the water when the hands enter there's no way you're going to keep your legs up.
I must be a weirdo: my favorite stroke is backstroke, and I hate freestyle!! I feel less dizzy when I do back because my eyes can focus on something out of water. As far as freestyle is concerned, I just find myself getting really bored doing free - I would much rather do a 400 IM in practice than a 400 free.
I agree, backstroke is my worst. I would like it dropped from the IM. I can not breath on my back. I can not see where I am going. I feel like a turtle on it's back.
Strange, in Europe the first stroke they teach is breaststroke. So Europe has had many great breaststrokers, men and women.
My least favorite stroke is fly. It wears me out so much that I can't even usually complete an entire 25 yds of it. I've read through the tips that people have given here for stroke/breathing technique when swimming fly so I'm going to try that out next time I'm at the pool.
Is there a set number of times that you kick per stroke on fly?
