We had a videotaping session in practice on Wed and I got some video of my butterfly. I've been trying to work on my butterfly lately but I could really use some pointers and suggestions for specific things to work on and how to work on them.
Clearly the turnover is too slow. Lack of range of motion in my shoulders doesn't allow me to keep my hands at the surface while my chest is down the way that people like Phelps do. In the underwater side view it looks like my hips sink way too much and then don't quite make it back up to the surface, but I don't know what to do about that other than a quicker recovery.
youtube.com/watch
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
www.youtube.com/watch.
Jimmy breaks it down nicely.
Thanks QuickSilver, that's a really good video, I found it a couple weeks ago and downloaded it and have watched it about a billion times. I had little brief glimpses of what a "soft entry" or laying your hands on top of the water as Jimmy says might feel like, as opposed to the tendency to sort of slam them into the water as seen on my video.
Two things I have noticed in Jimmy's video and video of elite swimmers is that really good flyers hips don't actually move up and down that much, they stay pretty close to the surface all the time. And if you watch anyone with a good fly and just watch the upper body they look like a teeter-totter, rotating around an axis across their body at about the bottom of the rip cage or a little lower. The upper-upper body comes up during pull for the breath and the hips go down just a little, and then the upper body seems to just drop back under the water and the hips pop up - and the drop happens before the hands go in. You don't see that natural drop in my stroke in the video, and I think I use the big kick to "force" it down. Saturday I really felt that pivot.
This video of Ian Crocker really shows the "drop" I'm talking about, although he doesn't have as pronounced a hip pop up as some people.
www.youtube.com/watch
Lindsay
That soft entry for sure. The biggest mistake is to slam the water on entry that causes a chain reaction that ends with a bad dolphin kick. I think it was my first comment about your fly video.
Two things I have noticed in Jimmy's video and video of elite swimmers is that really good flyers hips don't actually move up and down that much, they stay pretty close to the surface all the time.
Your welcome Lindsay.
What you stated is the key to butterfly rather than butter~struggle.
Chin down = high hips = zero gravity.
And yes Jimmy Shea is a super nice guy.
Hope he does well.
I think you'd benefit from
a flatter stroke (less amplitude) and
faster arm turn over with no pause out front
I could fix it with an in person
Swim Faster Faster session
time yourself for 25's
Thank you Ande, QuickSilver and George!
I devoted a good chunk of my workout yesterday to working on a wider entry and immediate catch and I think it is going to help a lot. It felt like it took a lot less effort, more energy going forward and less up and down. It also felt faster but that may have just been because the turnover was faster, I didn't time or count strokes per length. I also tried to get my elbows higher and to adjust the timing of the kick a bit.
I wonder if my over-large kick was a symptom of trying to "force" my chest (and extended arms) down and hips up. With the wider entry it seems like my chest "just falls" into the water and the hips pop up without me having to put much effort into it. I was concentrating on the front end so I'm not positive but it felt like the kick was lower amplitude - I was using fins so that I could do more lengths without having to contend with exhaustion. (The feel was very different compared to my old style with fins, not just compared to swimming without fins!) Tomorrow I'll see how it goes without fins. It will be interesting to see how different it looks on video because it feels very different.
There's a woman on my team of comparable speed, but with a much more economical looking stroke, I see that she has a wide entry:
youtube.com/watch
I really hope this works out because for the amount of time I've spent working on my fly it should be a lot better than it is! It would be great to have some visible improvement. Thanks again for the advice so far and for anything more anyone has to offer!
At practice last night I got at least a few glimmers of what I hope is my new fly style, without the fins. On top of trying to get a quick early breath and staying shallow I thought a bit about Jonathan's point about the finish. It does seem that really accelerating the end of the arm action helps with staying low over the water and staying flat as the arms reenter. I think part of the thing with fins is just that you go faster and it is easier to stay flat when you are going faster. I also tried to deemphasize the kick, but also keep my legs relatively straight and as high in the water as possible. I'm not sure but it did seem that I could keep my hips up a little better if I pressed down with my thighs a little in the latter part of the recovery.
I ran across an interesting video on youtube, it is a promo for the TI BetterFly for Every Body video:
youtube.com/watch
The video talks about two styles, demonstrated by Terry and Stephan. Stephan's style is much shallower than Terry's, and it made me wonder what he was doing differently (see the attached pics and the video). Certainly one thing is he never bends his knees anywhere near as much as as Terry, which made me wonder if keeping the legs straighter for longer might reduce sinking?
A bit of background, when I learned fly a few years ago I decided I wanted to do the 200 fly, and I think that led me to a style with a lot of glide and I think up and down. This is what I am trying to get away from now.
QuickSilver, please keep on telling me to keep low and shallow, I think it is starting to sink in, and I think it's leading me in the right direction!
Hi Lindsay,
Not sure if you have this book. Take a look at page 92 for starters.
It's very helpful.
Like in any stroke...keeping the head down ensures that the hips stay high. And as Jimmy says...that's a good thing.
Sounds like you're making the breakthrough.
books.google.com/books
For sure I can say, like others have, that your hands enter too far apart. Keep them shoulder width apart at the entry. Then scull out, then back in under the neck, then push straight back to just below the belly button, and then flare your hands out.
What I'm not 100% certain about is that you may be breathing too late. It looks like your arms and head collapse down on the water at the same time. I think you want to get your head down sooner, which might only be possible if you breathe sooner. It's hard to for me to see this in the clip, but perhaps it's something to think about.
