Learning to fly

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!

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!