I saw a post on these forums with a link to a site discussing the future of breaststroke and the idea of NOT breathing every stroke. I can see how it might be advantageous, especially in a 50.
For those not familiar, the idea is that during your main stroke phase, every other stroke you pull as though you're going to take a breath, you still come up but not nearly as much as a breathing stroke. It seems to me (this, having not tried it yet) that this would allow you to not only conserve energy but also actually deliver more force to the water due to a more opportune angle to move forward. It also seems like it would allow you to stay in a lower stroke, also allowing for a quicker and more effective streamline each non-breathing stroke.
Well, my question is this, do you guys think that it's a good idea to start working toward this sort of stroke, also, if I have a meet tonight should I risk it?
I think that for the 50 it is a definite plus, but what about the 100? My 100 Breaststroke time is a 1:07.16 currently so I would be more than just a bit outside of the 40 second rule for no breathing. I'm also worried that breathing less means that my pullout will be less effective due to a lack of oxygen, is this concern warranted?
My 50 time is currently a 30.19, I really want to get it under 30 seconds. Do you guys think that not breathing each stroke will make a significant difference?
The 29.08 was during a meet, not practice :P
I think actually the reason for my quick opening split is how well my pullout performs when I'm still fresh. My start is nothing special and my turns are often sloppy due to adrennaline causing me to forget how to swim.
The thing is that my 50 stroke feels inefficient, It doesn't have enough gliding to be maintained throughout a full race-pace 100. I'm going to take my friend's advice tonight and add about a quarter of a second to to each glide, and also staying LOW and strong.
My last 25 was an 18 from what my friend Xavier said so given that my last 50 was a 38 my THIRD 25 was actually the worst, almost a 20 second split! Bah, how do I fix it? :)
Thanks a lot for the help Fly,
I'll be sure to post my times tonight up here, I'm hoping to swim a 1:06 tonight, I'm swimming against a guy that goes a 1:08 currently, about what I swam last night. Should be an interesting race which I'm pretty sure I can finish well, despite swimming an IM only a short while before. :)
My guess is you're a churner. That makes for a fast 50 but death on anything longer. If you want to race 100 or even 200 breaststroke, you will need to lengthen out your stroke. How many strokes per length are you taking?
Good luck tonight. If you care about the breaststroke race, I'd skip the IM...
The 29.08 was during a meet, not practice :P
I think actually the reason for my quick opening split is how well my pullout performs when I'm still fresh. My start is nothing special and my turns are often sloppy due to adrennaline causing me to forget how to swim.
The thing is that my 50 stroke feels inefficient, It doesn't have enough gliding to be maintained throughout a full race-pace 100. I'm going to take my friend's advice tonight and add about a quarter of a second to to each glide, and also staying LOW and strong.
My last 25 was an 18 from what my friend Xavier said so given that my last 50 was a 38 my THIRD 25 was actually the worst, almost a 20 second split! Bah, how do I fix it? :)
Thanks a lot for the help Fly,
I'll be sure to post my times tonight up here, I'm hoping to swim a 1:06 tonight, I'm swimming against a guy that goes a 1:08 currently, about what I swam last night. Should be an interesting race which I'm pretty sure I can finish well, despite swimming an IM only a short while before. :)
My guess is you're a churner. That makes for a fast 50 but death on anything longer. If you want to race 100 or even 200 breaststroke, you will need to lengthen out your stroke. How many strokes per length are you taking?
Good luck tonight. If you care about the breaststroke race, I'd skip the IM...
