I recently had a disagreement with another swimmer about proper fly technique. After the recovery, where do the hands enter the water? I was taught they should enter the water a little wider than your shoulders, but he insisted that they should enter the water closer together, more like 6 inches apart. Which is correct? Does it make a difference whether you're swimming sprint fly or distance fly?
Former Member
Just watched Phelps again thumb and little finger enter water almost at the same time.
Great articles, dorothy! Looks like it's not something the experts completely agree on, so I'll try playing with it, both placement and angle, and see what happens.
Total Immersion teaches the arms slightly wider than the shoulders.
I think the most important thing in the fly is to keep a streamlined body dolphin, not letting the hips sink etc. - no butterstruggle as Terri likes to call it....
All I know is I followed what TI taught me and I brought down my 50 SCY fly from 37 sec last year to my final time at SCY NATS this year:
9 Jennifer Kyff 32 METR 30.92 30.87
I actually wasn't even hitting the SCY NAT quailfing time at home. The first step was learning proper technique and then butterfly drills and full butterfly stroke in practice.
25 fly
50 fly
100 fly
50 fly
25 fly
sets of 50's etc....
Looks like Mary uses her hands like the above article describes.
Inga has a straighter hand entry. I am having trouble getting Crocker's to play.
Got it, Crocker is thumbs down, pink up and very wide entry, but then, he has very wide shoulders, but I think he is wider than his shoulders. I know my son always liked going a bit wider.
We should not watch only Champions to determine swimming styles. Here is a video of a guy with one leg flying and doing all strokes. He is happy with his fly and I enjoy watching him fly www.amputee.ca/swimvideo.htm here is a nice one of Phelps underwater www.youtube.com/watch More swim videos www.online1966.com/all.asp
The late Joe Kurtzman, world champion and world record holder, explained to me that the twisting of the arms during the recovery of the butterfly not only caused the minimal rise of the body from the water to breath, but also caused the thumb first entry, which you all know by now, eliminates the dreaded dropped elbow during the stroke.
I was dumb (or whatever) enough to try swimming the fly with recovered hands landing palms face in (and down) instead of out and down. I did not do it enough times to be sure of anything but these were my impressions: The hands enter the water much smoother with palms out. However, with palms landing in you can pull quicker and with no hand and arm rotation but the earlier pulling seems to involve pushing down too much so any benefit is lost by extra drag. With palms landing out, the hand (and arm) rotation (during the short sweep) generates the least drag while getting into position to pull (which is conveniently the "glide" point). What I can't guess on is whether there is any benefit to the hands and arms doing the circle thing (like the breaststroke pizza shaping hand movement) before the hands go straight to the belly - other than it's just a necessary motion and result of the hands entering palms out.
I could be wrong about all of this but I don't plan on any further investigation as my curiosity is done.
