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
Thanks for the advice Terry, I didn't expect a reply directly from the TI source!
I've come to the conclusion that I should start over with the TI drills and practice each one longer before moving on.
I'll also experiment more with fins and no fins, my guess is that I'm doing something wrong as in the past I have found that everything feels great with the fins on, but then when I take them off I'm actually worse! With the fins on I can swim with no overt kick, but when I take the fins off my legs sink as I pull. I don't have a problem with my legs sinking normally so I decided to not use fins anymore. I suspect the real problem is that I don't have the undulation down right. I am getting better at underwater body dolphins but things seem to get awkward when I do them on the surface without fins.
Another question, can someone elaborate on landing forward instead of down, how exactly does one do that? What are you doing different to cause you to land forward instead of down? All I can figure is that maybe my timing is off and the downbeat of the kick is ending too early?
Our last club time trial is on Thursday so after that I plan on spending the summer concentrating on improving my fly.
An aside to Terry: if you ever revise the video it would be a bonus to have more footage of the final full stroke, esp. some underwater footage. It would also be helpful to explicitly state that you are teaching the one kick style, and explain the advantages as you have here, so that people like me don't get confused by our preconceptions.
Reply
Former Member
Thanks for the advice Terry, I didn't expect a reply directly from the TI source!
I've come to the conclusion that I should start over with the TI drills and practice each one longer before moving on.
I'll also experiment more with fins and no fins, my guess is that I'm doing something wrong as in the past I have found that everything feels great with the fins on, but then when I take them off I'm actually worse! With the fins on I can swim with no overt kick, but when I take the fins off my legs sink as I pull. I don't have a problem with my legs sinking normally so I decided to not use fins anymore. I suspect the real problem is that I don't have the undulation down right. I am getting better at underwater body dolphins but things seem to get awkward when I do them on the surface without fins.
Another question, can someone elaborate on landing forward instead of down, how exactly does one do that? What are you doing different to cause you to land forward instead of down? All I can figure is that maybe my timing is off and the downbeat of the kick is ending too early?
Our last club time trial is on Thursday so after that I plan on spending the summer concentrating on improving my fly.
An aside to Terry: if you ever revise the video it would be a bonus to have more footage of the final full stroke, esp. some underwater footage. It would also be helpful to explicitly state that you are teaching the one kick style, and explain the advantages as you have here, so that people like me don't get confused by our preconceptions.
