Hey everybody!! Just a few questions about your elbows!
1. During the freestyle recovery, how high do you need to have your elbows? some say 90 degrees to your shoulder at the height...but watching the Olympics and the SCM World Championships...It looked like they had their elbows a lot lower.
2. During the underwater pull on backstroke, do you bend your elbows or not? I dont' because sometimes it hurts the inside of my elbows and I feel like I get a better pull going straight back.
3. During the butterfly recovery, do you bend your elbows or not? I've seen people with little to none and people who almost drag their fingertips.
Thanx to everyone for all your help!!
~Kyra
Parents
Former Member
I'm glad my advice on the freestyle recovery helped you some. I also wanted to say that it's hard to articulate the proper stroke mechanics of butterfly in some ways (I'm no expert at this either!!).....I read another post here titled something like "dolphin kick" or "butterfly kick"...which you may want to read (it has really cool underwater pictures of Micheal Phelps during both his "arm entry phase" of butterfly and the beggining of his "arm recovery phase" of his butterfly as well). Phelps apparently uses what many others (including myself) use...and that's a two kick per stroke butterfly style. When I mentioned that you want to be experiencing an optimal amount of propulsion from your kick while your arms are recovering, that does not mean that you have to put your single dolphin kick ....or your predominant power dolphin kick (in the case that you use a two kick per stroke style) into your stroke right as you are beggining your arm recovery phase. I don't actually think about it when I'm doing it (it is more of an automatic thing for me b/c I have swam so much butterfly in my life I suppose)....but I believe that my primary kick may come "around the time" my arms are entering the water (or shortly thereafter?) followed by a shorter and tighter secondary kick "just before" my arms begin their recovery phase....This extra secondary kick is what gives me the extra momentum (i.e. propulsion) while my arms are recovering (so that I am not stagnant in the water when both of my arms are out of the water)....It is really more of a sensational thing than a cerebral thing if that makes any sense....I think I adapted the style out of neccesity after many years of swimming the stroke and searching for some kind of comfort zone? Body position is also very important for butterfly (as it is with all strokes I guess)....I try to stay fairly level for the most part....but I do let my hips raise and sort of drive the front part of my torso slightly doward as I am beggining to enter the water with my arms on each stroke. It's definitlely a highly "nontrivial" ordeal to swim butterfly with any degree of efficiency. Good Luck with it (and your backstroke as well!)
newmastersswimmer
I'm glad my advice on the freestyle recovery helped you some. I also wanted to say that it's hard to articulate the proper stroke mechanics of butterfly in some ways (I'm no expert at this either!!).....I read another post here titled something like "dolphin kick" or "butterfly kick"...which you may want to read (it has really cool underwater pictures of Micheal Phelps during both his "arm entry phase" of butterfly and the beggining of his "arm recovery phase" of his butterfly as well). Phelps apparently uses what many others (including myself) use...and that's a two kick per stroke butterfly style. When I mentioned that you want to be experiencing an optimal amount of propulsion from your kick while your arms are recovering, that does not mean that you have to put your single dolphin kick ....or your predominant power dolphin kick (in the case that you use a two kick per stroke style) into your stroke right as you are beggining your arm recovery phase. I don't actually think about it when I'm doing it (it is more of an automatic thing for me b/c I have swam so much butterfly in my life I suppose)....but I believe that my primary kick may come "around the time" my arms are entering the water (or shortly thereafter?) followed by a shorter and tighter secondary kick "just before" my arms begin their recovery phase....This extra secondary kick is what gives me the extra momentum (i.e. propulsion) while my arms are recovering (so that I am not stagnant in the water when both of my arms are out of the water)....It is really more of a sensational thing than a cerebral thing if that makes any sense....I think I adapted the style out of neccesity after many years of swimming the stroke and searching for some kind of comfort zone? Body position is also very important for butterfly (as it is with all strokes I guess)....I try to stay fairly level for the most part....but I do let my hips raise and sort of drive the front part of my torso slightly doward as I am beggining to enter the water with my arms on each stroke. It's definitlely a highly "nontrivial" ordeal to swim butterfly with any degree of efficiency. Good Luck with it (and your backstroke as well!)
newmastersswimmer
