Am thinking of getting a monofin to help with my butterfly (mainly the dolphin kick.....) which model do you guys recommend?
I don't about "expert" here. I'm just winging it and experimenting on my own. But I do love my MF and I can state with some certainty that it has helped my SDKs on back and fly and helped my starts. I can pop off a backstroke start underwater to 15 meters pretty regularly now. Plus, it's just a super fun toy. I use the $99 finis shooter designed for SDK/dolphin kick type work.
Here's a thread on monofins: forums.usms.org/showthread.php
I just joined masters. I swam fly in 1950. I am retracing my steps 57 years later. I normally swim about 1600 meters a workout. How do I build my fly endurance. I swam frog kick in 50 so this discussion very interesting. I swim in the 75-80 age group. I can inelegantly fly about 25 meters now. Any suggestions? I do 100 free in about 2'10" working out.
I apologize I meant a 2min 10 100 actually closer to 2min. So much for your inspiration, Last evening I swam eight fly 25s up, free back. I am tired today after doing that and a total of 1500 meters.
Thank you Fort......have been following the other threads, too, still spending $99 on something makes me think twice......on the other hand, I NEED work on my Dolphin kick in fly. The arm strength is there, but when I was a kid (did not swim for 35 years) it was the core strength that helped me swim butterfly. Really want to get that effortless feeling back into my fly so any prop that helps me reach that goal is money well spent!
Funny how swimming after a 35 year break, you find that strokes you hated as a kid are now your best strokes, and strokes that were your strength back then are not so good now......and of course goals are different now. Swimming more for fitness (I don't think I'll ever see those times again) than competition.
An MF is a big ticket item, but it was worth it for me. You can also work on your core strength with a serious dryland program. That will help your fly too. I try to forget all my youth times. They seem pretty irrelevant to me. We're just at a different place in life with different bodies. But I still suck at the same stroke I sucked at as a kid. No change there. :rofl:
I just joined masters. I swam fly in 1950. I am retracing my steps 57 years later. I normally swim about 1600 meters a workout. How do I build my fly endurance. I swam frog kick in 50 so this discussion very interesting. I swim in the 75-80 age group. I can inelegantly fly about 25 meters now. Any suggestions? I do 100 free in about 1'10" working out.
You do a 100 free in 1:10 in the 75 - 80 age group. :groovy: I am full of awe and admiration. I want to be able to say that too when I am your age! Thank you for the inspiration.
I have just recently started swimming fly and I have found doing long sets of 25's (alternating free and fly) helped a lot. At first 25 was all I could do until I lapsed into 'butterstruggle' so 25 was all I did. More recently I have expanded into sets 50's and 75's. My goal: to be able to do a set of 10 x 100 @ 2:00 and to compete in a 200m fly race.
Another suggestion (and I think this came up in a TI thread) is to do a 500 and at the beginning of each length do as many butterfly strokes as you can before your stroke starts to break down. The rest do easy free. For instance: initially you might only be doing 3 strokes of fly at the beginning of each length and the rest free. As you get stronger, you build that up: 4 then 5, etc until eventually you are doing the entire distance fly.
Check out this thread, too. forums.usms.org/showthread.php has some good info in it. Good luck with the fly and please tell us your progress. I would love to hear about it. And welcome to USMS!
Syd
Thank you Fort......have been following the other threads, too, still spending $99 on something makes me think twice......on the other hand, I NEED work on my Dolphin kick in fly. The arm strength is there, but when I was a kid (did not swim for 35 years) it was the core strength that helped me swim butterfly. Really want to get that effortless feeling back into my fly so any prop that helps me reach that goal is money well spent!
Funny how swimming after a 35 year break, you find that strokes you hated as a kid are now your best strokes, and strokes that were your strength back then are not so good now......and of course goals are different now. Swimming more for fitness (I don't think I'll ever see those times again) than competition.
Richard your fly endurance does not come overnight. Varied workouts are very important. I would work on building the workouts up to 2500 to 3500m.
When I started to swim again I did 3000m a day, after a 25 year lay off. In six weeks I was quite able to swim 50 and 100s of fly and crawl, in fairley good time. Build up first so you can handle the fly.
