In what order have you learned the different strokes?
Former Member
Of the 4 main strokes, is it safe to assume most people learned the breaststroke first? It seems to me the easiest to learn and was my first. Perhaps bufferfly is the last to be learned for most people?
Or maybe I'm not quite right?
Former Member
50m fly: 35.40
50m back: 35.26
50m br: 48.51
50m fr: 31.85
100m IM: 1:22.06
100m IM: 1:22 you probably could go 40:00 on 50m Br :cool:
I taught myself, more or less, and I learned breastroke, crawl, backstroke, and I don't think that's an unusual order.
I swam breastroke till I got used to breathing only when my head is out of the water. Then I started learning the crawl.
Backstroke was later because you have to learn to go in a straight line before you can share a lane. That means you have fewer opportunities to practice.
As for fly, well if God had wanted me to fly . . .He'd have given me flexibility, coordination and upper body strength.
If you learn at the Y, as most Americans do, it's crawl, backstroke, breastroke, fly. I'm told Europeans learn *** first. Perhaps someone else can confirm that.
What would be considered a bad breaststroke?
Let me offer you my recent results from a SCM sprint pentathlon.
50m fly: 35.40
50m back: 35.26
50m br: 48.51
50m fr: 31.85
100m IM: 1:22.06
I probably should have been disqualified just on principle.
I also find that they are not so much sculling as they are just moving their hands around, and they come out of the water simply by turning their bodies nearly upright. There are people at the gym who swim "breaststroke" that take a good minute plus to swim a length. But, they are really just there to be in the water and feel like they are getting some exercise, so good for them.
It has always puzzled me why many people think breaststroke is hard to learn or hard to swim well. It seems to me much simpler than the other 3 strokes. What would be considered a bad breaststroke?
Most of the folks like the one in the above video or the one I mentioned are old folks maybe in their 70's, so we shouldn't be too critical. It's good enough that they are swimming that much. ;)
Question for all: Is the first stroke you learned your best stroke now?
www.youtube.com/watch
LOL That's very funny. But in such cases you just have to tell the person to flatten down her body, which seems to me easier to do than correcting the kicking, pulling or rolling in freestyle or backstroke? At least in breaststroke there is rarely the problem of balancing left and right.
It's not the slowest I have seen, though. I once saw someone swimming freestyle almost without moving, and all of the rest of us were waiting for him to reach the other end of the lane so that we could start our turns, alas, without any hope!
