Training for butterfly, esp. 200m

Former Member
Former Member
Hi all, I'm looking for advice on training for the butterfly. In the way of background I'm 40, male, and started swimming with a Masters swim group last summer and have been learning butterfly. I was only a fitness swimmer before last summer, and only off and on. I did a 50m fly in 35.97 last November but haven't gone below 36s since. I've swum the 100 fly four times and have done 1:31.5 +/- 0.5s each time. I would like to work up to the 200m fly but am not sure how to go about it, unlike the other strokes I can't go further simply by going slower! At this point 100m is pretty much my limit, and I only do 100m in meets not as part of workout sets. I found an article on the H2ouston site on training for 200m fly, which brings up another issue: short axis pulsing/body dolphining. First, I'm not very good at it, I spent an hour on the weekend swimming back and forth across the width of the pool (6 lanes, not sure the distance), and I can do a width of the pool underwater but I'm pretty slow. Second, I don't really understand the relationship between body dolphins with one kick per cycle and butterfly with two kicks per cycle. The H2ouston article said there would be a separate article explaining this but I couldn't find it. I've got the total immersion butterfly/*** stroke video, but so far my butterfly is nowhere near "virtually effortless" as they describe in the video. I think I have the timing of the two kicks down ok, but I'm missing the connection between the body dolphins and the full stroke, other than initiating the launch kick of the full stroke in my upper body rather than just using my legs. I also worry that body dolphins involve a larger undulation than is desirable in the full stroke. I've seen a video of me swimming fly and it looks like it is in slow motion! My impression is that I might need less undulation in order to increase turnover? I am also unsure of what extent one has to swim fly to train for fly, we don't get a lot of fly, and really nothing over 50m of fly in our workouts, and if I tried to do 100m fly in the "choice" sets I would probably have a coronary! My current hypothesis is that technique is a greater obstacle to getting to the 200m fly than conditioning so all my freestyle training is going to have minimal impact. I just have to figure that those of you talking about doing 1650 of fly or 10 x 200m fly sets must be doing something different, I can't imagine that conditioning alone would allow me to keep up my stoke for 10 x 200m! But is there some particular aspect of technique one should adjust for longer distances? Help!
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  • Former Member
    Former Member
    Thanks for the responses! I think I now understand why I got frustrated with the TI butterfly drills: I didn't realize they were teaching one-kick butterfly! I "knew" butterfly had two kicks so when I got to the part where you add in the arms things didn't fit naturally. Tonight I watched the video again and when I viewed the whole-stroke part in slow motion I was able to see that she was in fact only doing one kick. Contrary to Kevin's post though, it looked to me like the downstroke of the kick occurred in the pull/launch phase? The shoulders came up and then the hips and then the feet, with the shoulders coming up again as the feet began the downstroke. Have I got this wrong? In Swimming Fastest a single kick per stroke is listed in the common stroke errors section... In one of the earlier threads one poster said that a single kick was a sprint adaptation to allow a faster turnover which got me wondering if the races Bob mentioned were 50m races? In the Tom Boettcher article he says he swims two kicks... I guess the question for me is, I already swim a two-kick stroke, should I switch to a one-kick stroke, especially if I want to concentrate on the longer distances? What about practicing the body dolphins to work on whole body swimming and both up-stroke and down-stroke aspects of kicking but use two-kick one arm fly instead of body dolphins when doing the Half-Fly sets? I did a few hundreds of that on the weekend and I can picture it working. I will try experimenting with slowing down but also keeping my hips high. By the way Matt, are you doing one kick or two kick fly?
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  • Former Member
    Former Member
    Thanks for the responses! I think I now understand why I got frustrated with the TI butterfly drills: I didn't realize they were teaching one-kick butterfly! I "knew" butterfly had two kicks so when I got to the part where you add in the arms things didn't fit naturally. Tonight I watched the video again and when I viewed the whole-stroke part in slow motion I was able to see that she was in fact only doing one kick. Contrary to Kevin's post though, it looked to me like the downstroke of the kick occurred in the pull/launch phase? The shoulders came up and then the hips and then the feet, with the shoulders coming up again as the feet began the downstroke. Have I got this wrong? In Swimming Fastest a single kick per stroke is listed in the common stroke errors section... In one of the earlier threads one poster said that a single kick was a sprint adaptation to allow a faster turnover which got me wondering if the races Bob mentioned were 50m races? In the Tom Boettcher article he says he swims two kicks... I guess the question for me is, I already swim a two-kick stroke, should I switch to a one-kick stroke, especially if I want to concentrate on the longer distances? What about practicing the body dolphins to work on whole body swimming and both up-stroke and down-stroke aspects of kicking but use two-kick one arm fly instead of body dolphins when doing the Half-Fly sets? I did a few hundreds of that on the weekend and I can picture it working. I will try experimenting with slowing down but also keeping my hips high. By the way Matt, are you doing one kick or two kick fly?
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