Learning to fly

I have been working on fly by switching to one arm fly drill ( alternate arms every two strokes) once I cannot keep the stroke smooth. Anyone else doing this?

Having recently learned butterfly I'll offer some of the observations I've made of late: 1) Know whether you are going to swim one-kick or two-kick butterfly. The TI stuff teaches a one-kick stroke, a majority of other sources teach a two-kick stroke. Both are legitimate and there are swimmers at the highest levels using both, but if you try to use the TI drills while your coach is teaching you the two-kick stroke confusion and frustration will result. 2) The single most common stroke flaw I see and one I have to continually be aware of is breathing too late and/or keeping your head up too long. Your head should start descending toward the water as your hands come out of the water. It should feel like your head and shoulders are pulling your arms around in the recovery. If you stand with your arms at your side and your head back as if you were lifting it to breath (if you were horizontal) and "drop" your head forward while bringing your arms around as if recovering you should get a feel for the relationship between the two movements. 3) Another extremely common problem is kicking from the knees instead of undulating. Beginners often drop their knees and then kick back with their lower legs and feet. Usually this quickly results in the lower body dropping in the water and a lot of effort going into kicking the whole body up to the surface to breath (aka butterstruggle). You should be able to swim quite good butterfly with good body undulation and minimal knee bend. 4) Don't dive into the water with your hands and arms. You do inititiate the recovery with your head and shoulders but you want to keep your hands near the surface (to the extent that your flexibility allows). You want to press your chest down not dive down. Pressing your chest down will cause your hips to pop up to the surface where they belong. If you stand and lean your chest forward your hips will move back, it is the same feeling when swimming fly. 5) Once you are in the chest down, hip and legs up position you can bring your hips and legs down as you pull and your chest and upper body will pop up easily allowing you to breath easily. The chest, hips, knees feet moving down in progression is the undulation everyone refers to and it is very distinct from a leg based kick. 6) The important aid in using fins is that they give you forward speed. If you just undulate up and down without forward movement all you are doing is pushing water up and down with a little bit of water pushed back by the lower legs. If you aren't moving forward when you go from the chest pressed to the chest lifted to breath you are lifting a lot of water straight up. If you are moving forward you are sliding out from under the water over your back rather than lifting it up. The fins allow you to keep your forward speed easily so you can get the feel of undulating through the water. You should be able to move forward with very little "kick". If you use fins too much you will feel you feet slipping up and down when you try to swim without them. 7) Timing makes a huge difference in butterfly. As your hands enter and you press your chest down you should feel as though you are sliding down a wave and timing your kick to propel you down that wave will maintain your forward momentum. If the timing is not right it will feel more like you landed on top of the wave. This is the kick that you do in one kick butterfly. The kick that flows out of the chest press, hip press, leg press is the one that will propel you forward and up out of the water to breath and if the timing is right relative to the pull it will make getting high enough to breath easy. This is the second kick and even one-kick swimmers do it a bit, just with less emphasis, which is why some people refer to one kick fly as one and a half kick fly. I think that while learning fly its all about the hips. It is crucial to get the hips up to the surface with the chest press or your stroke will quickly turn towards vertical and you'll be spending a lot of energy on vertical movement instead of forward movement. Be sure to breath as early and as quickly as possible. Good luck!

Originally posted by BillS Thanks for the advice. I'm up to a whopping 50 meters without drowning, which is a significant improvement over my earlier about 10-meters-then-drowning efforts, but the last 15 is largely sub-surface flailing and then I need to hang on the wall for about forever to recover. I think there is a pretty broad concensus that it is better to only swim as far as you can with relatively good form, i.e. it is better to swim 25m of quality fly, recover, and repeat than to try to swim 50m and have some of it be bad form. I have several butterfly videos, including the TI butterfly and breaststroke video, and my favorite is the Go Swim Butterfly with Misty Hyman. http://goswim.tv/ It outlines a number of focus points and common errors with a lot of good video. The TI video is good from the point of building a stroke up from scratch using a progression of drills, but it teaches one kick fly and if you are used to two kick fly and have a coach that teaches two kick fly it can be frustrating, and there is not enough good underwater video of whole stroke swimming for my taste.

I usually do that too. When I was first learning fly, it really helped with the smooth part.

Originally posted by BillS .... Can a 44 year old lousy kicker learn to fly? .... Yes. Try this forum post I made recently that collects some threads here, and some useful links: forums.usms.org/showthread.php LindsayNB made a lot of good points here, especially #2, 3, & 5 if you are just starting out. I seem to recall seeing photos of some Olympian that looked like they bent their knees rather significantly on the kick (though I agree, that action can drop you like a stone)... hummm... the opinion mill starts. (Actually I saw this photo in a 06-25-2004 by LindsayNB.) Here are some additional notes I just made for myself: Coach Hines says: "My philosophy is that successfully racing 200 fly requires the ability to swim relaxed fly at a moderate pace for 500 yards." He does this with his "half-fly" practice method. - from p11 of the Mar-Apr-05 issue of USMS Swimmer. The same article quoted swimmer/coach Dennis Baker saying: "Most people have a problem with their timing... trying to kick down while their arms are pulling down." His solution is to not kick at all, just let the legs drag and follow the hips, and add the timing of the kick later. I agree that when done right butterfly (like all strokes) should feel as smooth as silk. And timing is everything! Far more critical than all the other strokes combined probably, especially for looking (and feeling) even halfway presentable when you do it. One bit I recall seeing somewhere recently is that authorities (coaches) will often differ on opinion on certain aspects of swimming technique, but when the majority of them agree on the same item, then you can pretty well bet that it is important, and worth further scrutiny. You will just need to glean through all the opinions, try stuff for yourself (like keeping the hips up), and decide what works best for you. When I began earnestly practicing butterfly I was told I needed a good kick (which is true), and that I'd get a nice set of six-pack abs (I'm still waiting for that, but I'm starting to feel it). But the paradox is that it was not until I quit trying to kick that I was able to develop a good rhythm (as coach Baker, and others, confirm). As my conditioning developed and I was able to stay more horizontal (as opposed to tiring and slipping into the vertical butter-struggle), I slowly began to develop the right kick, along with that "core" strength and "undulating" movement you hear so much about (that seems so elusive till you get it). With Butterfly you will know when you hit it. It is quite the revealing moment of clarity. Of course then the task is then to be able to maintain that moment. (Practice, study, practice, study, practice, practice, etc.) I have a ways to go before I sign up for the 200 fly, but I'm thinking I can see it now on the horizon. I'm 6'2", 185#, and 46y/o... I've been practicing fly now for about 2 years, and I'm able to knock off 50's without much effort. I'm really enjoying it now, especially those first few 50's. But when I really learn is when I start to get tired and can still maintain my form (for me it takes a lot of concentration). I agree 100% that when you start to fall apart you need to quit, or switch to something else (another stroke, kick drills on your back, etc.). I've never used any props (fins, kick board, etc.), but umpty-ump number of swimmers can't be wrong, so I'm sure they will help shorten the learning curve. But I'm no expert either. expert \`ek-spert\ n - "x" = the unknown factor, "spurt" = a drip under pressure. :-) One thing I've been focusing on recently that really seems to help, especially when I feel fatigue starting to creep in, is to really stretch out where you can put some glide into your stroke. Open the chest really wide with the arms fully extended (you should feel a really good stretch along your sides, almost into your lats), pulling your elbows back behind you (up towards the surface). It helps to have some forward motion (as described in the slipping action getting from under the water over your back). I can get a longer pull this way, which makes it easier to generate the thrust to grab that breath. I can be almost at a standstill and still keep fairly decent form with this method when I start getting tired. Momentum certainly does help though. When I do this well rested, and keeping my hips up (legs trailing behind), the stroke really flows. There is little doubt to me that this sets you up for that undulating motion so often mentioned. I recall seeing a photo in Scott Rabalais' (Duck & Dive) article that illustrated this position very well. I wish I could recall which issue of SWIM Magazine it was in. Have Fun!

No disagreement from me that the kick can eventually include a significant bend in the knees (as illustrated by the image of Michael Phelps I posted elsewhere). My point was that you need to learn to undulate properly first and then learn to strengthen the kick. I've just seen too many people that haven't learned to undulate substitute kicking from the knee, which doesn't work well. It's a learning strategy thing not a final stroke form thing. When I want to really stretch out my stroke I find it useful to delay my kick until after my hands enter to ensure that I get a good "downhill" glide, and then wait until my hips and legs are fully up on the surface before starting the next pull. I also use the one arm fly a lot to warm up and establish the feel of the stroke before doing full fly, and do sets of 4-4-4, or 3-3-3 or 2-2-2 or 2-2-rest of the way full, etc. Off topic: if you make a duplicate post you can click on the edit button, check the box at the top left and then click on the delete button at the top right.

I've looked at the TI stuff and wondered if it was worth a damn . . . this gives me an excuse to exercise my credit card, one of my favorite sports-related activities . . . Thanks for the advice. I'm up to a whopping 50 meters without drowning, which is a significant improvement over my earlier about 10-meters-then-drowning efforts, but the last 15 is largely sub-surface flailing and then I need to hang on the wall for about forever to recover. I pretend to be figuring out the next phase of the workout -- which probably isn't going to work in the middle of an IM. I'll keep at it for a while. if you have strong abs, you can do it relatively easily. LOL, now there's my problem. I abandoned my 6 pack about 25 years ago for those seductive 6 packs filled with green bottles. I definitely can't do it "relatively easily."

I have the Four Strokes Made Easy DVD and it's amazing! I felt a difference in my fly after about a week. My fly is still terrible, but sooo much better than it was. I highly recommend it, it's well worth the investment.

I tried the head-lead underwater kick drill (arms at your side, body-dolphin kick). My first time, I barely moved, flopped around like a fish on land. (This was very recent! I've been swimming fly for years, but I know my technique is screwed up.) My kick is getting better, as I've tried to coordinate the body movements. Like people say, start the pulse in the chest, and let it "whip" down to the legs. What also helped was thinking about kicking from the hips, and not the legs. By that, I mean that I was trying to imagine kicking with the lower abdomen, and letting the legs trail behind. (That was the feeling, not what was actually happening.) I am getting better wave motion, less stress on the thighs, *and* a stronger kick.

I think keeping your arms at your sides enables you to emphasize the undulation more. It's just like lots of other drills where you isolate one part of the stroke to work on.