Training for butterfly, esp. 200m

I don't think I am as far along as you in learning the fly, but I do have a similar feeling. So far, I don't ever swim more than one length at a time - otherwise I get sloppy and I don't want to let that become a habit. Usually, I swim 25 fly then either 25 free or 75 free - something like that. My timing on the kicks/strokes is terrible. In my case, what I have learned is that it starts on the push off/first stroke. I push off and glide. Then as I start to slow down, I begin to kick to get the most out of the push off before stroking. The first stroke has to be timed right or I am in big trouble. If the timing of the first stroke is right, I can finish the length with relative ease. If the timing is off - in my case I think I begin the stroke a split second too late - forget it. It becomes almost impossible to recover my arms. I am between kicks when trying to recover/breathe so I don't get that push out of the water. My arms end up recovering partly under the water instead of over and I have to lift my head to breathe instead of keeping it in line with my back. If I get a first stroke like this, I just stop doing the fly and immediately go into freestyle stroke rather than try to get the timing fixed for that length.

Lindsay, I'm not a fly specialist, but I can swim it when we have to. Wednsday is IM day. :).. aside from being Prince spagetti night. But looking at the video there seems to be a double kick even if he pauses ever so slightly. Not sure if this is one kick fly but it sure is a little unusual. My coach from way back always had us think about the hips and chin and from what I recall this may be of help.... *Focus on keeping your hips near the surface. If they go vertical when you pop up to breathe you're going to be dragging through the water rather than skimming along the surface. *That leads to the chin comment. When you take a breath, make it fast and keep the chin down low. Don't be concerned about getting an unwanted gulp of pool water. (Some people even turn their heads to the side in keeping a low horizontal line in the water.) When your head comes out for a breath, try to face down again immediately so the arms have a free range of motion and can stay lower on the recovery. There's alot to think about but once you maintain a horizontal body posture everything starts to come together.

Lindsay, Thanks for an interesting thread. Have you looked at the "Fly Away" video by Monika Schloeder? She works with the Calgary swimmers. This has a very interesting approach. I have used quite a few of her drill progressions with my swimmers. Some swimmers feel that the should dive down into the water when their hands enter. They are trying to force an undulation. But all that unecessary up and dowm movement wastes energy and creates more drag. Keep your body horizontal and relaxed and it will undulate as much as you need if the timing of your arms and legs is correct. I tell my kids to "kick the hands into the water ( specifically from hand entry kick them into the catch ) and to kick the hands out of the water ( exit into recovery ). I see this as, feet push down as hands move into catch, feet raise up as hands meet under chest and feet kick down as hands move from under chest to their exit from the water. During the arm recovery the feet are moving upwards. I especially work on timing the 2nd downbeat to match the hand push back. We practice a drill where the hands are held under the chest, with feet raised and we kick the hands backwards and out of the water. This is to get the feel of arms and legs in unison. On the "Fly Away' video, they are doing the more traditional fly, where the hands do push back all the way to the hips before exiting for the recovery. Terry Laughlin is describing the "front end fly", which has some differences from the other form. The "stoneskipper" drill is used by Bill Sweetenham with UK swimming, but he calls it the "Biondi drill ". One progression is "stoneskipper" or "Biondi" drill with one kick between, then 2 kicks between, 3 and the 4 kicks between. This can be run in either direction, ascending or descending number of kicks inbetween. When you look at Michael Phelps swim you can see that he has a wide entry. His arms are outside his shoulders and they pull almost straight back into his catch and arm pull. There seems to be a move by the best swimmers to avoid pushing sideways against the water, i.e using sweeps. Instead the hands move backwards in an almost straight path. I am looking forward to seeing what techniques are used in the Olympics. Bob Bowman, Phelps's coach will be at the British coaches conference this year. I hope to ask him about Phelps' technique. By the way it is great to hear from Matt S, Mark in MD, Cinc 310 etc. Where have you guys been ? The forums have been, in my opinion, a bit uninteresting recently, welcome back !:)

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.

Hi Gareth, I haven't seen Fly Away yet but I've seen the description at swiminfo.com. I've got the Total Immersion Breaststroke and Butterfly video and the USA Swimming Michael Phelps Go Fast butterfly DVD. Would you recommend Fly Away as my next butterfly video? Swiminfo also has: Auburn Swimming Faster Butterfly Championship Productions - Butterfly Technique Coaches Choice-Basic Butterfly Technique Quick Series: Winning Butterfly and the Go Swim folks have a new video: Go Swim Butterfly with Misty Hyman Any reviews and/or recommendations for which to buy next? Degree of undulation is an interesting issue, Phelps has a fair degree as shown below. When I was first learning a year ago I had too much, then I cut down and developed a very flat style, but I was relying on pull and kick to rise enough to get a breath. Right now I'm just doing the amount that feels natural and waiting to get some consistancy in my stroke before starting work on the finer points. What is it that is being worked on with Stoneskipper/Biondi drill adding progressively more kicks? One thing for sure, I can't get my arms as far back as Phelps does here:

Originally posted by Gareth Eckley When you look at Michael Phelps swim you can see that he has a wide entry. His arms are outside his shoulders and they pull almost straight back into his catch and arm pull. There seems to be a move by the best swimmers to avoid pushing sideways against the water, i.e using sweeps. Instead the hands move backwards in an almost straight path. Looking at a few clips of Phelps he does enter wide (as does Crocker) and goes straight to the catch, but he does bring his hands in almost together by the time they are under his torso. I haven't heard any reasonable argument for starting with the arms narrow and sweeping out to a catch, unless you want to glide before starting the outsweep in which case the narrow position is more streamlined. But gliding means losing speed which means having to regain your speed, which means wasting energy. The way I go on you would almost think I thought I knew what I was talking about, but believe me I know I haven't got it figured out yet! I just have a lot of fun going through the video clips frame by frame trying to figure things out. Esposito of course enters with his hands together :)

Lindsay, There are quite a few fly videos out there. I only have the Total immersion one and the Fly Away videos. I like them because they have different approaches to the stroke. I have not seen the others that you mention; Auburn Swimming Faster Butterfly Championship Productions - Butterfly Technique Coaches Choice-Basic Butterfly Technique Quick Series: Winning Butterfly I am assuming that they are quite similar in their approach. The Misty Hyman video must be interesting, you will seee tons of kicking and body undulation in that one, i think. The kick is not needed to get your arms to recover, in fact if you try to delay the 2nd kick until your arms have exited then you get into all kinds of problems. The body pulsing or kicks between the " stoneskipper " drill is really to allow you time to settle in position for the next underwater arm movement. If you try to do do the "stoneskipper" continuously right away then you will probably have problems mastering it. I was meaning that the "straighter arms" with Phelps is the front part, wider entry into catch. That is not entering narrow and sweeping hands out into the catch. When the hands come under the chest they do come close together and then sweep out and back to their exit. I still would choose the "fly away" video over the others. She covers all aspects of the stroke and the turn, with some great drills. I asked Monika Schloder why the drills showed the arm pull finishing close to the hips when in "front end " fly the hands exit wider. Her response was that in teaching the stroke, swimmers develop a longer stroke if drilled this way and that this style suits some swimmers better. When the swimmers are proficient then you can see if the shorter pull with wider exit suits them more. You can experiment to find which style works best for you. :)

Thanks for the reply Lindsay. You very articulate in describing the breakdown of this stroke. I think the first part to improving and ultimately excelling at any given stroke is in understanding the technique that works best for your body composition. It sounds like you are well on your way . Having long limbs and great flexiblity is a bonus to any swimmer. And watching people like Phelps who has both characteristics is a real eye opener. He swims like a fish, not a human. I caught a quick commercial promo for the upcoming Olympic Games where they show him swimming butterfly across the Atlantic ocean. He hits the Statue of Liberty and then turns around and says "One !". (meaning one length.) Pretty clever. In any case, his fly stoke is absolutely effortless. And in my opinion it's because he's fluid, swimming with lots of rythm and undulation. No stiffness or hesitation exists in his stroke. Exactly as per your description. I admire your efforts in becoming a butterfly champ. By the way www.swim.ee/index.html is a great web site. Being a backstroker I watch the Lenny K. and Aaron clips from time to time.

Hi Lindsay, It is not just new swimmers that struggle with the issues that you bring up. I have a few top-ten times, but I have been and continue to fuss with my stroke, in *significant* ways. I have at least three different strokes that I now swim in competition. I am trying to settle on one, without much success. As a youth I had a self-taught stroke that caused general amusement for anyone looking at it. My second kick (the first one is when the arms enter the water) was mistimed and strong, so that most of my upper half of my body came out of the water, with my head and chest facing forward as the arms swept past (I think this is the "all kinds of problems" that Gareth mentions.) It was fast enough to get by -- I even got to the PA state championships with it. It was not good enough for college and 200's, however, and I became relegated to swimming nothing but backstroke. After my sophmore year I got tired of being laughed at and spent the summer totally reconstructing my stroke. I became what I felt was 'arm centered' rather than 'kick centered.' I let my arms pull my body through the water and the kick developed (almost) naturally. Despite being a philosophy totally different from what is coached then and now, coaches and swimmers thought it looked good with good 'body dolphin.' In my two remaining years I got to 52+ and 1:58+ and I was getting faster every meet. The trouble was that I still could not breath and get a second kick in, so I always did one kick on breath strokes. I suspect that my stroke looks similar to Esposito's (without the large outsweep at the beginning of the pull.) Until very recently I thought that was a very serious stroke flaw. I am rethinking that now, but over the last couple of years I have again reconstructed my stroke in an attempt to get that second kick in. The motivation, besides esthetic, was a complete collapse during a couple of 200 flys. I felt that with age I could no longer afford to give up the extra propulsion. So now I have a 'distance' fly where I recover into the water with my hands closer together, with an extended glide. With that glide I can place a breath and that second kick pretty much where I want them, something I find impossible in my normal arm/body motion. It is *not* fast, now at least, but I have used it for the beginning of a 200 (I can negative split that race now, if I want) or a 1650 fly (I did a 21:40 this year in that event.) Coaches say it looks good and smooth, even though I feel that I am spending most of my time gliding. So now I have three different butterfly strokes -- a sprint, head down, no breath 2-kick fly, probably the same as what I swam in high school, used in 50's and the end of 100's, a 1 and 1/2 kick fly (two kicks head down, one kick on the alternate breath stroke) like I did in college and used in 100's and the end of 200's, and my gliding 2-kick stroke that I do as an old man. So now I am torn between an attempt to make my glide stroke more peppy, and deciding I am a wus, go back to my college stroke (with concentration on keeping my hips high) and just accept that my body will collapse at the end of the 200. So thanks for your thread. It has got me rethinking my stroke (again!) and allowed me to write this self-indulgent post.

Hi Phil, I haven't managed to complete a 200m yet let alone a 1650, so I wouldn't dream of offering advice but there is a comment in Swimming Fastest, under "Timing Errors" that addresses trying to add a second kick to a one kick stroke. You can judge whether it has any application in your case. Kicking only once per stroke - In reality, the one-kick butterfly is really a one-and-a-half-kick butterfly because swimmers start but do not complete the downbeat of the second kick. This makes it difficult for them to maintain the hips near the surface and the inclined body position will increase form drag during the finish of the underwater armstroke and recovery. The one-kick butterfly is difficult to correct ... Simply telling swimmers to kick twice will not remedy the situation. Butterfly swimmers who kick only once during each stroke cycle usually try to catch too quickly and then push straight back without sweeping the hands in under the body. This sets up a chain of events that makes the underwater armstroke so short that swimmers do not have time to bring the legs up and then kick them down a second time before the hands leave the water. As a result, they only have time to execute a partial downbeat. One-kick butterflyers should be instructed to exaggerate the outsweep and insweep of their armstrokes to provide enough time to get the legs in position to complete the second downbeat of the dolphin kick before the hands leave the water. Thorpe's stroke looks to me like it might be this one-and-half-kick butterfly: www.swim.ee/.../Thorpe-fly-underwater.mpg The issue of having more than one butterfly stroke is interesting. When I started doing the 100m I developed a more relaxed style with more glide. Today I realized that the "new" stroke I've been developing is actually turning out to be more of a sprint stroke, at least it's about as fast as my old sprint stroke ( :) ) and also as tiring ( :( ). Hmm, another pothole in the road toward a 200... :)