Learning to fly

Coach Hines wrote two articles a while back, and I have found them very helpful. You can find them at his team's web site: http://www.h2oustonswims.org/ Click on the "Articles" tab, and then read "Slip Slidin' Away" & "Vive Le Papillon" About three-four years ago I resolved to become an example of "that guy." (Read the articles and you'll know what I mean.) I was officially there last April at the Illinois Masters SCY Championships when I swam one of the easiest 200 fly races ever. Please note that the goal was not to swim my fastest 200 fly ever (well, a PR from college days pretty much took that off the table regardless of what I do), but an easy 200 fly. In other words have control of my pace and technique so that I can swim a 200 or longer anytime I chose, and have the option of accelerating during some portion of the second half of the race. Here are a few lessons I learned on the way. These are idiosyncratic and may or may not be relevant to you: - One kick fly works. I've gone with the Emmett Hines/Total Immersion approach, which as Lindsey points out is a one beat kick per stroke cycle. The application to distance fly is pretty clear. The surprise is I can sprint this way too. I simply think of kicking up with as much authority as I kick down, and I broke a PR in the 50m fly with this technique. - Swim with your body, not your arms. Learn to body dolphin first, then fit your arm stroke in to the body dolphin rhythm. This usually means karate chopping your arms out a little earlier than full arm extension at the back of the stroke, so you can complete the arm stroke in one body dolphin. For 200s, I found the key to maintaining form was to think of NOT pulling, but simply let my arms go along for the ride. - Oxygen management. What makes fly so challenging is the problem of lifting your shoulders out of the water enough for over arm recovery and breathing, and still lifting your hips up to the surface so you don't drag them through the water. One way to solve that is to not breath every cycle, which lets you keep you shoulders a little lower and helps the sinking hips problem. The challenge is swiming fly with one third to one half less oxygen than if you breathed every stroke. The solution that worked for me was to breath every stroke, and use a small glide after my arms recovered. During this time, I pressed my chest deeper for a split second longer, and my hips floated into position every stroke cycle. I was waiting longer for the breath, but breathing every stroke more than made up for it. This is what really let me throttle down my fly so I could swim it as long as I chose. A great drill for that is to alternate two cycles of breaststroke with two cycles of fly. Make the fly feel more like *** (i.e. a glide) and make the *** feel more like fly (i.e. more body dolphin action). Meaning no disrespect to Michael by using the term butterstruggle, it is simply a statement of reality for most of us. Michael is the gifted exception. As a scholarship flyer, I'm sure he can power through a 200 fly with great speed and control, and look terrific. He's the other kind of swimmer Emmett described in his articles. Unfortunately for me (and I did swim a little fly as a Div III athlete myself, so I ain't exactly chopped liver) I don't have those skills, and I have to be very crafty with my technique to avoid the dreaded butterstruggle. BTW, I wholeheartedly agree that you should limit fly distances and repeats to those you can do with good form. Don't grind yardage after it falls apart or you will be learning butterstruggle. That is the genius of Emmett's 500 yard "easy fly" swim. You only do good form fly, AND you get the confidence boost of working towards not just 200, but 500 yards of fly. Matt

Thanks, Matt, I read Emmet's articles yesterday after re-reading the older fly thread and was anxious to give his techniques a try -- and then an ENTIRE MIDDLE SCHOOL showed up at MY POOL and took up almost the entire pool, turning it into a churning rapid. And a nice lady who asked to share my lane thought lane splitting meant that she swam the center line while I hugged the lane line. After I about clipped her a couple of times doing catchup free, I gave up on any fly for the day, cause I'm sure I would have tagged her then. Just as a rhetorical question, if you are a nice middle aged lady and have 3 single swimmer lanes to choose from, why would you choose the one with the tallest guy in the pool with the longest arms? Although she was not in the same league as the woman who dropped into my lane, unannounced from the opposite end, in the middle of sprints, whom I encountered to my great surprise while I was in full cry mid-length. She was doing the sidestroke dead center down the lane, and fixed me with a steely glare for almost hitting her. But I digress. Actually, it's great to see the kids having a good time at the pool, and my wife brought our 5 and 2 year old down. There's nothing much better in this world than the look on my learning-to-swim-but-already-thinks-he-can 5 year old's face after retrieving a diving ring off the bottom. And I know I'm spoiled -- I usually have an entire lane, and often there's no more than one or two other people swimming over the lunch hour. If I go past 1:00, it's often just me, which is a great way to concentrate on stroke mechanics. And today I have a schedule conflict and can't swim. But I'm hoping to try some of Emmett's stuff tomorrow, because I, too, am hoping to become "that guy," even though a couple of weeks ago I'd never done fly for more than 10 meters. Thanks to all the posters for the comments and advice, they are greatly appreciated.

Well, for many swimmers fly and 200 fly is conditioning. That why 1000's of 13 year old girls can break the 3:00 barrier in 200 meter fly and only 7 women master swimmers 45 to 56 can do that. We don't workout the yardage for it. Unlike Breaststroke which is easy but you have to have perfect timing,fly you have to be in shape for, especially if its further than a 50.

I knew there was a reason for that drill!:D

what is the best way to do one armed fly? I've seen people do it with their arm in front of them, which is the way I do it, but then have read here that some people do it with their arm at their side.. Which is best (if any?)

Another use for one arm fly: to get past an oncoming swimmer without anyone getting hurt. ;)

The breathing frequency issue reminds me of an observation I made at a recent meet where I was a turns judge. Many of the younger and slower swimmers did not keep a constant stroke rhythm when they breathed, their stroke rate was faster when they weren't breathing than on strokes where they were. The faster swimmers seemed to have a pretty much even stroke rate regardless of whether they were breathing on any particular stroke. I know that for shorter distances I swim faster when I breath less often. I expect some of this is simply that I keep a more streamlined body position when I don't breath, but I wonder if maybe I don't also delay my recovery a bit when I breath. I really need to get video taped...

Cin, Yes for a lot of people the 200 is conditioning, and it certainly helps. But if you want to discover the tao of the fly, learn from your elders. My first steps on the path to enlightenment (or what passes as such in my darkened corner of the jungle) was watching the swimmers in the 70-74 age group for the 200 fly at Nationals. Those dudes are decidely NOT powering through the race on pure conditioning. That was my first clue to breathing more often than every other stroke, since they generally breathed every stroke, but their hips magically stay up. Things that made me say "hmm." Safety point: I have developed a habit I call break away arm stroke to avoid injury. It's very simple. If I feel my arm encounter anything as it recovers (especially another arm or body part of a swimmer going the opposite direction), I immediately let it go limp &/or flop it back to my side. Missing half of a stroke cycle is infinitely preferable to breaking or pulling something for either one of us. I was pretty amused at your description of a whole middle school invading your pool. Been there. When I was a kid on a summer league team, we used to take over a chunk of a large municiple pool that was 25 yards wide. The lifeguards would simply run off the rec swimmers, and we'd take over that section for an hour or so. One practice our coach had us doing all out 25 sprint flys, from the dive off the side of the pool. That section looked pretty inviting to one swimmer (funny how immersion of the exterior of the body has such profound effects on the internal operation of people's cerebral cortext. Folks who would never think of coming within 10 feet of the out of bounds line on a land sport think nothing of sashaying right in front of a swimmer in full out sprint mode, usually with about one foot separation) 'cause he wandered into our area with precisely zero situational awareness. The first any of us became aware of his presence is when I speared the dude with the crown of my head directly impacting his torso at full speed. If it was the NFL, they would have flagged me for 15 yards and ejected me from the game. Lucky for us both I'm me, and not Ian Crocker, because neither of us was more than stunned. I'd be willing to bet though that dude was pretty careful about avoiding the swim team section of the pool in the future. When that's all I have for the IT cracker barrel tonight. Happy laps, Matt

I knew a guy once who wanted to improve his fly. So he started swimming nohting but fly. He would break whenever he was tired. He started doing 50's & 25's, then he worked up to doing 100's & 200's. He didn't care about form, only how tired he was. In time he got to where he could go 600 to 800 yds straight doing perfect fly. He would breath every stroke. Sometimes he was barely able to get his arms above the water on the recovery. But in time, that didn't matter. In his case, form was unimportant for much of the time. Distance was more important. He would do work outs of 2000 yds all fly. He got a great set of ab muscles along the way. He did no kicking nor arm drills. Just fly. His shoulders became boulders!

Awww, don't get me started -- the Aquarobes finish up around noon. The lap lanes in our pool are in the middle, with the Aquarobes doing their thing in the shallow end, and the locker rooms adjacent to the deep end. Several of them daily bob through the lap lanes after their deal heading to the locker room, usually with no regard for the lap swimmers, or if they do pay attention, hanging on the lane lines, or worse, the wall, until the offending swimmer passes by. It's not so much the distraction, or the hanging -- it's the insane amounts of perfume most of them seem to wear and leave in (always her) wake. The water smells and tastes of it for a long, long time after they bob through. I mean no disrespect to Aquarobes in general. I have great respect for anyone who does any degree of exercise consistently. But perfume in the pool? I'm trying Emmett Hines's stuff today; we'll see how it goes. I've been sticking to 25's, and stopping fly as soon as technique falls apart, even mid-length. I'm hoping to start stretching yardage using his suggestions. I figure there is absolutely no point learning to Butterstruggle at my age; I'll either get it right or I'll revert to substituting other strokes to get through the IM's. Curiously, Hines says it shoud be easier to do SAP with the arms at the side than in a streamline position. I've found the opposite to be true, and I ain't exactly flexible. I'll try it both ways.