During breaststroke, my coach tells us that we should look downwards and never to the front, and keep our heads down. However, all the videos I've seen of great Olympic and Worlds breaststrokers such as Hansen and Kitajima look forward when they take their breaths. Even Phelps looks only slightly downwards but mainly forwards when taking a breath. In fact, the women breaststrokers supposedly swimming "like men" are the major swimmers that swim breaststroke with their heads down (Kirk, Hardy...).
So why are the male breaststrokers swimming with their heads up when everyone has told me to keep the head down during breaststroke?
We just recently did a week focusing on each of the strokes after our coach got back from a workshop in Fort Lauderdale. She showed us a great video that had some logical explanations for looking down in the breaststroke. I wish that I could remember the name of the video...
Anyway, in the video footage, it appeared to me that during the breath, the head doesn't strictly face the bottom of the pool but the gaze does look down. On the glide the head does face down.
I haven't done breaststroke since I was a age-grouper, so I really can't tell you which method is better. However, I did find that the looking down theory works much better with a contemporary breaststroke. I tend to be stuck in the rut of when it was illegal to submerge your head (my head just barely goes underwater and I have very little dolphin motion), and it's really hard to look at the bottom with the old-style stroke.
We just recently did a week focusing on each of the strokes after our coach got back from a workshop in Fort Lauderdale. She showed us a great video that had some logical explanations for looking down in the breaststroke. I wish that I could remember the name of the video...
Anyway, in the video footage, it appeared to me that during the breath, the head doesn't strictly face the bottom of the pool but the gaze does look down. On the glide the head does face down.
I haven't done breaststroke since I was a age-grouper, so I really can't tell you which method is better. However, I did find that the looking down theory works much better with a contemporary breaststroke. I tend to be stuck in the rut of when it was illegal to submerge your head (my head just barely goes underwater and I have very little dolphin motion), and it's really hard to look at the bottom with the old-style stroke.
