Head-up dolphin kick drill

Flying start not a win, I raced the best beat them lots of times but never when it counted, The guys I raced for the 100 Jack Nelson, Bill Yorzyk and the guy who did the 1:00.1 the 1:01:0 is a misprint in the records his time was 1:00:0 Takashi ISHIMOTO JPN 29-06-1958 Los Angeles, CA, USA 1:00.1 Tak and I would do a few 55 yard fly swims at the practice pool near Heidleburg Australia during the 56 Olympics, we partied together after the games.

Thanks for taking the time to post your insights. Going to try this one today with the age groupers.

When your arms are by your sides, it is primarily your head that determines where your body goes. Your chest is pulsing up and down. How do you convert that vertical energy into horizontal movement? Well, by using your head, literally and figuratively. Its 10-lb weight, a considerable distance from your center of mass, becomes your "rudder." By artfully manipulating it within a fairly small range of relaxed movement, you can channel that energy into mostly-forward movement. This is something that totally eludes me. On a good day I can get my head in sync with my undulation so it helps rather than hinders it, but generating forward movement with my head is something I've never managed. Of course, I have trouble generating forward movement by undulating period. A couple weeks ago we did a drill where we did a flip turn half way down the lane and then were supposed to dolphin kick under water to get going forward again before breaking out. I don't think I moved forward an inch while dolphin kicking. In general I seem to be able to maintain some speed by dolphin kicking or undulating but not generate it, unless of course I have fins on in which case I can accelerate and zoom along quite nicely. :dunno:

We want the same thing here. We teach this via what we call a "sneaky" breath. Chin stays in water. You try to breathe in such a way that it's difficult for an observer to see the breath. Would you happen to have a clip? I begin surfacing for the breath as soon as my hands begin to engage, complete the breath at around the moment my upper chest comes over the hands and am returning my head to the water as the hands exit. Yeah that makes sense. After so many years coaching triathlon I guess my butterfly (my specialty) is a bit rusty thanks. But the bottom line remains though. Purpose of this drill is to improve balance without the help of the hands. I use a very simple but efficient trick to help this as well. I ask the swimmers to look at where they're about to breathe, before actually breathing. This simple head motion (while looking at the surface) seem to have a very beneficial effect. That triggers the upward ondulation by itself without having to use pulling power. The hands never reach the place they would be in this drill - i.e. elbows straight and hands trailing by the hips. At the moment the head is most "up" (i.e. moment of inhale) the hands are pretty much in line with the shoulders. So having the hands behind you with head up would create a position that one would hope never to see in whole-stroke. I think you exagerate a bit here, probably to make the "heads-up" drill sound like useless. You exagerate by timing the head movement relative to the whole stroke a bit too early. Though I agree on the fact that this motion should be initiated fairly early, I'd say that the head remains outside the water for a while, certainly long enough for the hands to reach a position that is further (in the cycle) than what you describe.

Good thing for me when I raced the butterfly, close to 1 min flat for the 100m, when fly was in the development stage, never did a butterfly work out, never did a drill, just did it. I think you guys are making it too complicated. Just one stroke and 2 kicks from the shoulder.

I tried to attach a couple pix taken of me breathing in Fly but the file size exceeded that allowed. Have to try to figure out another way. If the image isn't saved as JPEG save it as JPEG, if it is try cropping it or saving it at lower resolution or with the quality set lower, most swimming pictures will look fine with a lower quality setting. I think the attached picture illustrates that you can get adequate quality at adequate resolution at well under the file size limit.

I tried to attach a couple pix taken of me breathing in Fly but the file size exceeded that allowed. Have to try to figure out another way. Hi TotalSwimm, You may want to try resizing them maybe? Go under Start-Programs-Accessories-Paint (or something like that) Then open your file. Then (when you're in Paint application), choose Image-Stretch/Skew and key is a low value. Like 30%-30%

If the image isn't saved as JPEG save it as JPEG, if it is try cropping it or saving it at lower resolution or with the quality set lower, most swimming pictures will look fine with a lower quality setting. I think the attached picture illustrates that you can get adequate quality at adequate resolution at well under the file size limit. would you happen to have few butterfly recoveries while breathing in your library ? :drink:

... I think you guys are making it too complicated. Just one stroke and 2 kicks from the shoulder. I agree with geochuck, it is too easy to over think butterfly. Keen observation (of yourself and others), along with patience and practice, will take you a long way. I feel that I am steadily nailing it more and more often in my fly practice, but right now I actually swim over 600yds of fly per day, 4+ days per week. As long as I’m really enjoying it, like I am now, I’ll keep at it. Drills are great aids, especially if cutting your times is important, but I feel there is no substitute for just doing the whole stroke. This is especially true for an athletic feat like butterfly where timing and finesse are so fundamentally critical. I may look up a bit as I set myself for the pull, but I wait till the last possible moment to lift my head and breathe, otherwise it kills my forward momentum. I pretty much never feel any “natural balance while breathing” in fly, not consistently, not yet anyway. Keeping a streamlined position while breathing is by far my most difficult task in fly. I’ve not tried this “head up dolphin kick drill” yet either, but I really appreciate this thread, it is good food for thought.

I found the greatest help for me when getting the stroke put together was not to concentrate on the kick and to make sure the arms cleared the water and exiting cleanly, along with getting the whole body from the shoulders flexing, the hips up then hips down legs automatically following (just little movement). The first time I did fly I did a 60 second 100yards. I was doing about 50 second 100 yard free at that time. After I felt confident with the fly I would do 25s or 50s during our endless relay swims I would dolphin kick against the freestylers in the club. I was beating them doing the dolpin kicks.