As a new swimmer, and being 47 years old, I basically swim freestyle and a little *** (have trouble keeping my kick legal). Today, during my morning workout provided me by this very website, a dolphin kick was necessary. Quickly donning my zoomers (I suck at kick) I proceeded down the pool. Seeing as it still took me forever, I had a lot of time to ponder lifes meaning. For me its "Start early if you want to swim fly." For although two years into my swimming career, no way I can do fly. Even if I had the strength to get my arms out of the water that long...I am so rhythmic challenged I will never pull it together. Oh well, I feel comfortable swimming free, and so far the lack of the additional events hasnt hurt me none. Anyone out there learn to swim fly at such an advanced age?
Started fly at age 6. The team was doing fun relays. I told the coach I didn't know how to do fly, and he said to imitate what the other people were doing.
At age 11, had a coach who changed my stroke so that I was trying to breathe during the arm recovery and kicking out of phase with my arm stroke. :shakeshead: That was the real start of my two decade hatred of butterfly.
I started to learn how to do fly right about two years ago, still working on breaking bad habits.
Hey, I'm 47, just learning how to swim swim, if you know what I mean, and butterfly is my ambition. Gotta have those goals! It is beautiful to watch, exhilarating to swim (yes comical, too, but we'll get there). Hang in there.
I started a couple years ago at age 45. I have swam a couple of 50's and 100 IM's in meets without being DQ'd, which was my only real goal, and like that I can swim the IM sets in workout without having to work around the fly legs. Although it will never be my best stroke, and still requires a fair bit of effort, it's a lot of fun to swim. As a side benefit, the kicking has helped me start to incorporate dolphin kicking on my start and turns in free.
There are quite a few good threads here about getting started. Here's one: forums.usms.org/showthread.php
And another: forums.usms.org/showthread.php
Good luck, and have fun with it!
Kip, sounds like you like a challenge! I say go for it, as one day a few years down the road once you're zooming through a 200 fly at nationals, you'll be saying to yourself, man I wish I tried this earlier!
Butterfly is certainly tough, and the hardest thing, as you mention, is getting the cadence down correctly. Ideally, you will have one pull and two kicks each cycle, but for someone just starting out, i recommend doubling the kicks to 4 per cycle (it is actually legal to swim that way anyway). In a 2-kick cycle, you use the first kick of the cycle to propel your arms forward, and a smaller kick for the underwater portion of your arms as they move back towards your hips.
If you look at it as swimming free with both arms at the same time, it isn't so bad :)
Good luck!!
I could do fly until I had to take a breath (about 15 yards) when I was a young teen. I was really a breaststroker and a freestyler until 18 and then I stopped swimming. I started swimming again in October at 44 years. In January, the coach 'decided' that I was a butterflyer and told me we would be working on it for Nationals (LCM). I thought he was crazy! (My parents laughed when I told them this as they had seen me swim it as a kid!) However, it is now the beginning of May, and I can do 50 meters without my stroke falling apart. I have since turned 45 and can finally do fly and breath when I need to. My first ever butterfly event will be June 10th (Yikes!). I always thought that butterfly was my worst stroke, but now it has moved up and back stroke has moved to the bottom. So there is hope.
I tried fly when I was in high school (mid ‘70’s, working as a lifeguard, never was on a team), but never really learned it then.
Fast forward to 2000, age 42. I was about 5 years into a self-prescribed swimming regimen to recover lost mobility (especially in shoulders) due to a severe arthritis condition. (I basically had to re-learn to swim starting in 1995.) I needed a challenge, so I VERY SLOWLY started to introduce butterfly into my repertoire. About a year later I actually started doing butterfly.
In December of 2001 (age 43) I got proficient enough at it that I did my first fly event. Nothing to crow about, but it was legal. I did a lot of intense study, and a moderate amount of practice in the beginning. I’d say it took me about 2-3 years to get decent at it.
Now, about six years into it (at age 48) I feel proficient at it, but still don’t feel that it is totally automatic most of the time. I still work on my kick a lot and mostly do short distances in practice (kick out on my back, and fly back, rest, repeat). I typically do one 50 at the end of my practice to see how well I can hold up when I’m tired (which to me is the real test). A few weeks ago I did a 400IM in practice and it felt pretty good, so it is nice to know I still got it. Want to test myself again on the 200 fly (in practice), but just thinking about it for now.
