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!
Parents
Former Member
Hi Valhallan, Esposito's style is definately unique among the video clips I've seen of elite swimmers, but he holds the SCM world record in the 200m butterfly so I figure it can't be all bad!
The thing I found most interesting about it is the relationship between the kicks and the undulation, it seems pretty clear to me that the kick is not transmitting the force from the core body undulation in the sense of a wave moving through the metaphorical whipped towel, and he's very clearly not following a standing wave pattern. Even more interesting for me, the most overt kick occurs after his head and trunk are horizontal in the water as his arms reenter, not as he launches out of the water to recover his arms, in fact from the point where his arms come level with his shoulders during the pull to when they leave the water his legs are barely moving at all. This made me really question the idea of using the kick to launch up out of the water for the breath, which was part of my previous mental model of the stroke.
The other kick also affected my thinking in that it seems to me that he is using the kick to maintain momentum as the arms enter and move to the catch. It is the loss of speed during this part of the stroke that is usually cited as the reason why butterfly is not as fast a freestyle. A timing or style that fills in this valley in the speed profile to produce a more even profile should increase efficiency.
I then took another look at Phelp's more classical two-kick style:
underwater video of Michael Phelps' fly
and after much frame by frame observation concluded that his timing of the reentry kick was the same although he does a kick during the launch as well.
About this time I was noticing, as I practiced breathing while body dolphining and breathing during breaststroke kick with no kickboard that undulation allowed me to easily get my head up to breath without requiring any propulsion from the kick and with minimal sinking of the hips, especially if I was quick about breathing and getting back to a horizontal position quickly.
When I put the two things together, an undulation starting with my chest and moving smoothly down my body to my feet, and timing my other kick to start its downbeat as I got horizontal, it was like magic! The pull and recovery of the arms seemed to just automatically flow from the undulation and I had no problem breathing or keeping my arm recovery above water. Don't get me wrong, I'm still struggling to integrate the stroke, I still tend to revert to kicking instead of undulating, to kicking too early, to breathing too late. But I frequently get it right and it feels great when I do. I find one-arm fly drills are the most useful in helping me work on the timing, and I do those until I feel I've got it down before starting on full stroke.
Different mental models work for different people, getting away from undulation as propulsion and instead thinking of it as a movement that smoothly integrates the various motions involved in breathing, pulling, and recovery worked for me. Now I think undulate-and-kick, undulate-and-kick, with the undulate part including one of the two kicks, and the second kick being the one that keeps my speed up as I reenter and catch.
Oops! Gareth has posted message while I was writing this, but this is already pretty long so I'll reply to his post separately.
Reply
Former Member
Hi Valhallan, Esposito's style is definately unique among the video clips I've seen of elite swimmers, but he holds the SCM world record in the 200m butterfly so I figure it can't be all bad!
The thing I found most interesting about it is the relationship between the kicks and the undulation, it seems pretty clear to me that the kick is not transmitting the force from the core body undulation in the sense of a wave moving through the metaphorical whipped towel, and he's very clearly not following a standing wave pattern. Even more interesting for me, the most overt kick occurs after his head and trunk are horizontal in the water as his arms reenter, not as he launches out of the water to recover his arms, in fact from the point where his arms come level with his shoulders during the pull to when they leave the water his legs are barely moving at all. This made me really question the idea of using the kick to launch up out of the water for the breath, which was part of my previous mental model of the stroke.
The other kick also affected my thinking in that it seems to me that he is using the kick to maintain momentum as the arms enter and move to the catch. It is the loss of speed during this part of the stroke that is usually cited as the reason why butterfly is not as fast a freestyle. A timing or style that fills in this valley in the speed profile to produce a more even profile should increase efficiency.
I then took another look at Phelp's more classical two-kick style:
underwater video of Michael Phelps' fly
and after much frame by frame observation concluded that his timing of the reentry kick was the same although he does a kick during the launch as well.
About this time I was noticing, as I practiced breathing while body dolphining and breathing during breaststroke kick with no kickboard that undulation allowed me to easily get my head up to breath without requiring any propulsion from the kick and with minimal sinking of the hips, especially if I was quick about breathing and getting back to a horizontal position quickly.
When I put the two things together, an undulation starting with my chest and moving smoothly down my body to my feet, and timing my other kick to start its downbeat as I got horizontal, it was like magic! The pull and recovery of the arms seemed to just automatically flow from the undulation and I had no problem breathing or keeping my arm recovery above water. Don't get me wrong, I'm still struggling to integrate the stroke, I still tend to revert to kicking instead of undulating, to kicking too early, to breathing too late. But I frequently get it right and it feels great when I do. I find one-arm fly drills are the most useful in helping me work on the timing, and I do those until I feel I've got it down before starting on full stroke.
Different mental models work for different people, getting away from undulation as propulsion and instead thinking of it as a movement that smoothly integrates the various motions involved in breathing, pulling, and recovery worked for me. Now I think undulate-and-kick, undulate-and-kick, with the undulate part including one of the two kicks, and the second kick being the one that keeps my speed up as I reenter and catch.
Oops! Gareth has posted message while I was writing this, but this is already pretty long so I'll reply to his post separately.
