*** Sprint Workout Ideas?

As far as training sprint breaststroke, it's not much different than training for sprinting another stroke. The slower intervals are the biggest difference. Do some 15-meter "breakouts" with a good, fast pullout and about four or five strokes. This is the most important part of any length of breaststroke, because you can lose lots of speed here with all the drag coefficients. Make sure to snap each aspect of the pullout and do not glide for a long time. The first stroke should keep the speed you had underwater. Do some 25s and 50s with lots of rest. For most of these, don't worry about the time. Feel the stroke while you're going fast. If you feel slipping or something else, take the rest time to tell your brain to work on it next time. Improvement is slow. It's good you have this goal well in advance.

It's really hard to give specific recommendations without having seen you swim, but here are a few things to think about: 1) In breaststroke, as with every other stroke, minimizing drag is at least as important as maximizing propulsion. Some ways to do this are: (a) Think about your streamline as being the anchor position for both your armstroke and your kick. People often find that it helps, as a drill, to actually pause in their streamline at the end of each stroke/kick cycle so that they can make sure they are really returning to their streamline. Once you are doing this consistently, gradually cut out the pause in your streamline. (b) The best armstroke in the world isn't going to help you if you lose all your momentum during the recovery. As soon as your arms have finished the propulsive part of their stroke, they become a liability, so you want to sweep them in and snap them forward as quickly as possible. People often find that it helps to deemphasize the propulsive part of their armstroke for awhile and to focus entirely on the recovery. As your hands recover forward, hunch your shoulders a little and focus on keeping your elbows close together, making your arms slide forward in the water like a needle poking into a piece of cloth. As your arms are approaching full extension, drive your face forward into the water so that you finish with your arms in a streamline. (c) Remember that there are three parts to the kick: the thrust, the squeeze, and the recovery. During the thrust, you point your toes as far outward as possible and use the insides of your ankles as paddles to anchor your position in the water as your arms are snapping forward into a streamline. During the squeeze, you bring your legs forcefully together, squeezing the water out from between them, and simultaneously point your toes in line with your legs, finishing with your legs in a streamline. The squeeze phase is the part of the kick where swimmers typically feel their body really soaring. One of the commoner errors people make is to rush their kick and miss all or part of the squeeze phase. During the recovery, you recock the gun, so to speak, bringing your feet forward until your heels are against your butt (this should happen as you are pulsing up to breathe, so that this upward pulsing will keep your feet underwater). Make sure that your knees stay close together and try to recover your ankles in the shadow of your bodyline to minimize drag. 2) Make sure your timing is right. In order for your stroke to have maximum effectiveness, your armstroke, the upward pulsing of your body to breathe, and the different phases of your kick all need to be properly synchronized. Your shoulders should be pulsing up and your feet should be finishing their recovery as you are doing the insweep of your arms prior to recovering them forward. You should be in the midst of the thrust phase of your kick as your arms are recovering forward and your head is driving forward into the water. When your arms have reached streamline, you should be in the squeeze phase of your kick, bringing your legs into streamline as well. A drill you may find useful is to watch the markings on the bottom of the pool as you swim and watch for points at which you see your body slow down or stop relative to those markings. Those points are dead spots in your stroke, and cost you momentum which you must then build up again. So try to adjust your stroke timing to eliminate those dead spots. While I've suggested drills to help with some of these points, you can work on nearly all of them while doing whole stroke breaststroke during a practice just by making a point of choosing one particular thing to focus on during each lap or set of laps. By varying your focal point, you can gradually perfect each of the different aspects of your breaststroke. Bob

Think about thrusting your arms out as hard as your kick. I like to call it, "kicking your arms out". But don't concentrate on the arms, but think about your kick pushing your arms out. The quicker you get back into the streamline position, the less time will be spent on drag. Also, of course I can't see you, but be careful not to 'overpull'. When I encounter swimmers who's stroke is too big (their elbows touch their sides) I tell them 'take half that stroke'. Obviously, it's not a true half of stroke, but the important thing is to keep you stroke infront of your body. Try to keep your elbows from passing your shoulder. Get somebody to watch you from above. Joe Bubel

Wow! This is a great thread!. Thanks for the detailed explanation on timing and technique for this one Bob!!

Good pullout excercise? Verticle pull from a dead stop. This works well in 13 feet deep water. Drop down to the bottom, to a dead stop just above the pool bottom. Then Pull yourself to the surface with just one pull. Repeat. (don't push off from the bottom).

Alright! Thanks for the responses! Well, I've been doing everything I can do today. Did backwards all out eggbeater. Does that help a lot with the *** kick? I've noticed that sometimes my hands will grab too much air and slip. Must improve that. Also, I think I'm having a major glitch in my stroke. When I'm going all out, sometimes my thumbs can touch my forehead during recovery! (thumbs are perpendicular to hands during this)! Once my wild thumbs knocked my goggles right off. Is this a common error? I've been watching Warneke swim slow motion and it seems that his recovery is different from, say, Hansen and Kitajima's and his hands are coming close to his head too. Also his undulation is far greater than theirs too - you can see his butt coming out of the water like in fly. I can't seem to grab onto the water well for my kicks. I can't really see the tiles go by me fast unless I'm having a wide kick, which I know can create the illusion of fast but is actually overall slower. What can I do to improve my kick? I already know the kick on back drill. Any other suggestions? Any good workouts and intervals like, say, 10x25 on 1min or things like that? Is that good? I'm obviously not a coach, and our coach has left the school and I won't get another coach till next year. What are some pointers to get a better underwater pullout? I feel that's a weak aspect of my stroke too. I can't get very far without gliding a lot - so much that I spend about 10 seconds underwater with slow speed just to get to the 10m mark. Any dryland exercises? People told me not to randomly do weights, but are pushups and situps alright? What about squats? And any ankle flexibility drills? Oh yea, any tips, suggestions, workouts, drills, dryland exercises, and everything to help me improve my breaststroke is welcome!!

I'm concerned Bobs definition of what he calls the squeeze may confuse some people. While its true you want to finish with your legs together and your feet streamlined,his description didn't emphasize that you don't kick outward. Your feet start turned out as far as you can,so when you kick back they do curve in,but it should feel like you are kicking back and not out. As for a good breaststroke sprint workout,my favorite is 15-20X100 on the 2:30. These are swum as a 25 *** and the 75 as free with the free swum as a cool down.The first,sixth,eleventh,(and sixteenth) are swum at moderate speed focusing on stroke mechanics so that the stroke doesn't fall apart on the sprints. The others are all out sprints(followed by the cool down.) If you find yourself slowing down increase the interval.Try to go at least as fast as the second 25 of your competition 50.

Just thought you should know how I feel... Don't do breaststrke!

Have you tried the palms up recovery I don't like the prayer recovery, palms together. I only do arms only breaststrke, very bad knees.

lol @ geochuck. What's wrong with breaststroke? A lot of the guys on my high school team this year would rather do a 200 *** than a 200 fly. Thanks 2 everyone else for the detailed explanations. But can anyone answer 2 questions I have right now that were also on the last post? They are: 1)I think I'm having a major glitch in my stroke. When I'm going all out, sometimes my thumbs can touch my forehead during recovery! (thumbs are perpendicular to hands during this)! Once my wild thumbs knocked my goggles right off. Is this a common error? I've been watching Warneke swim slow motion and it seems that his recovery is different from, say, Hansen and Kitajima's and his hands are coming close to his head too. Also his undulation is far greater than theirs too - you can see his butt coming out of the water like in fly. Oh yea, the thumb thing only happens when I'm not focusing too well on my strokes. Happens rarely, but it happened so I noticed it. 2) What should I do for dryland? People have been telling me not to randomly do weights, but are pushups and situps okay? Squats? People say they're bad for the knees, but hell I'm swimming lots of breaststroke anyways. Oh yea, GoRedFox, your drill is excellent. I've been pulling myself from 3.5m deep water no pushoff from the ground. I would drop to the bottom, when I feel my heels have hit the bottom pull up. The thing is, I can't make any part of my body pop out except my head =(. Is it possible to get powerful enough to pull my torso out? Even my speedo out of the water? One more thing, for a 25m length, I can usually do 8 strokes from pushoff and pullout going normal speed. Going fast I use 10 to 11 strokes, and going slow 7 strokes. Is that too much? I feel that my strokes aren't that long and I couldn't glide very far. What are some ways to increase my distance traveled per stroke? Any practices to strengthen the leg kick more? Thanks a lot guys. This thread's soo helpful.