Breaststroke video

You are still at a downward angle at your dolphin and your pull out. There appears to be a fair loss of forward momentum when you have to change your angle and kick to the surface. Try to get parallel to the pool bottom during the push off. You want to be shallow enough that after you do the pull down that you head will break as you are slowing from the kick. You want to be in position to start your first pull as soon as your head breaks. Practice riding the parallel push a little farther too.

I agree with ddunbar. You got that breakout wrong. When you pull back your arms, you should be changing your angle towards the surface. This helps maintain speed. It seems you are trying to maintain depth during the pull. Your head should be very close to the surface when you bring your arms through and take your first kick. Otherwise the stroke looks very descent to me.

I don't think you push off at too steep an angle,but you continue down for too long instead of leveling off.On your pull down you are losing propulsion at the end.I am not sure why,but you are decelerating while you should be still accelerating.Since you are too deep you probably have to raise your head when you do,but ideally you shouldn't raise your head at all but have your head down in the breakout.In fact you should keep your head down at all times,but you raise it to breathe.On the breakout you want to be shallow enough to start your pull before your head breaks the surface.Your head must break the surface before the insweep,so you want to start it before you surface.In your regular pull you are still not getting a good EVF and are instead leading with your elbows.Try doing some fist closed pull and focus on using your forearms to pull.

You are right, your push off takes you to deep and you loose your momentum going back up. Also, your head is doing a lot of bobbing. Do you tend to look straight ahead or keep your eyes toward the bottom of the pool? Do you have any above water footage?

Observe the master. Just remember that doing the butterfly kick before the pulldown is still considered illegal by USMS rules (so don't do that until the rule changes, if ever): www.youtube.com/watch Damn, I wish I could do 1% of what he does! One thing I noticed with Kitajima is that he has one of the longest glides for 3/4 of a race and still builds a significant lead.

Lightning, I think the reason you are going so deep on the push off is that you are overexagerating your head position. It seems slight but the back of your head is below your arms instead of being between your arms. As a result this is creating a shoulders down, hips up orientation of your body during the pull which is driving you deeper. This is clearly visible thruout the streamline and if you pause it right before you start your pull, you can really see the difference in the level of your shoulders versus the level of your hips. At least a foot difference if not more. While sitting in a chair, assume a streamline position and focus on your ears, if your ears are not pressed against your upper arms, then your chin is tucked too far towards your chest. Tilt your chin up just until you can feel your arms come in contact with your ears. That's the position you want on your streamlines. This will put your shoulders and hips at the proper angle and prevent your pull from taking too deep.

I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with your pulldown and it occurs to me, as Allen intimated, that you are slowing down too much before doing your pulldown. Same issue before your kick. You lose too much momentum by waiting so long between pushoff, pull and kick. Allen is right that you need to be very near the surface by the time you've finished your underwater breaststroke kick. The elite guys seem to pop up and take their first pull almost immediately after that underwater kick...

This is a revelation; I was intentionally tucking my head under my arms, wrongly assuming it was an improved form... might explain why I struggle with depth and breakouts. Thanks Paul! I also noticed I lose propulsion at the end, as was mentioned above, but cant tell if I'm timing it wrong with my sdk, or pulling improperly. Definitely I need to not go so deep. Definitley, I see I need to get my forearms pulling water earlier for more power, by getting them more vertical and sooner. The fist drill has helped my freestyle so I will try in BRreaststroke. Thanks Allen Stark! So, more parallel to the bottom will help keep momementum AND help me keep my head flatter when I breakout. And use the pulldown to start angling up. thanks ddunbar and rtodd! I understand the "hips up" and stronger kick; how do I get them up? thanks Midas! 2fishand1whale - in my pull, I am looking straight a few feet in front of me, but when I recover I may be tucking my head too low and looking down? or is it not down enough? to get my hips up more? Lightning, I'm no "expert" so maybe I shouldn't be giving a ton of advice. But I'd think about driving forward rather than down. You're trying to copy butterfly a bit too much with your lower body (especially the further you got into your swim there). Watch Kitajima and you'll see that his hips stay relatively on the same plane the entire time. The timing of your kick may be slightly too late as well, which may be causing the problem. The timing and strength of your kick will improve with time and training. Good luck. Keep it up the great work. You have demonstrated a ton of improvement from your first videos.

This is a revelation; I was intentionally tucking my head under my arms, wrongly assuming it was an improved form... might explain why I struggle with depth and breakouts. Thanks Paul! I also noticed I lose propulsion at the end, as was mentioned above, but cant tell if I'm timing it wrong with my sdk, or pulling improperly. Definitely I need to not go so deep. Definitley, I see I need to get my forearms pulling water earlier for more power, by getting them more vertical and sooner. The fist drill has helped my freestyle so I will try in BRreaststroke. Thanks Allen Stark! So, more parallel to the bottom will help keep momementum AND help me keep my head flatter when I breakout. And use the pulldown to start angling up. thanks ddunbar and rtodd! I understand the "hips up" and stronger kick; how do I get them up? thanks Midas! 2fishand1whale - in my pull, I am looking straight a few feet in front of me, but when I recover I may be tucking my head too low and looking down? or is it not down enough? to get my hips up more?

Brendan Hansen's technique has been described many times as "textbook", so it might not hurt to look at his stroke. If you watch this video (from about 0:08 until 0:16), you get a good shot of how his hips are up, and his body lunges more forward than down. Even though his upper body is angled down in the water, he is still moving forward rather than down. Also, you'll notice that there isn't the pronounced undulation you have in your stroke that I think is more characteristic of butterfly as someone else pointed out. Your kick doesn't look like it's really too late, it just isn't pushing your hips up and forward like it should be. If you're kicking properly, you should feel like your hips are going to pop out of the water. Don't worry so much about undulating and just focus on the hip/leg action and staying streamlined for a tad longer (i.e., ride the glide). Also, the others are right re: the timing of your underwater pull. You shouldn't be down there for longer than 3-4 seconds. If you watch Kitajima, Brendan Hansen, any of those guys, they all have pretty much the same timing. You should streamline for a second, maybe a little more, then the pull and kick, and by the 0:03, you should be doing your breakout with your first stroke no more than 4.5 seconds after you push off the wall. You can see this in pretty much any video on YouTube. Another thing I noticed is that your head comes up too early. Looking at your video, you pick your head up before you even start your outsweep. Your head should start to come up after you've started your outsweep with your head breaking the water just before you start your insweep. If you notice, your head breaks the surface really early (unless that's just the glare from the water).