I've always tried to breathe every other stroke in fly, but watching the elites at Worlds breathe every stroke made me want to try it out. So recently I experimented with breathing every stroke in fly. Findings after a couple workouts where I averaged about 600 total yards of full-stroke fly:
Breathing every stroke has a negative impact on my body position
I can help that by kicking harder
The additional oxygen that I get from all the extra breathing helps fuel the harder kicking, but it seems like I'm working harder overall (higher perceived pulse rate at the end of each swim, but I didn't actually measure it)
Stroke counts and times are about the same
So I think I've found a useful drill to make me kick harder, but I doubt I'll be trying this in a race anytime soon. Has anyone else (who hasn't always swum fly this way) messed around with breathing every stroke in fly? What were your findings?
The lower you keep your head, the better you will do breathing every stroke. If you lift your head high and look forward a lot as you breathe you are using a lot of force to lift your head and it can tire you out more.
Keep your head low and you will probably find less change between a breathing stroke and a non-breathing stroke.
I have folks do drills very similar to the video above, and it seems to help in that regard. An important aspect of that drill is that you don't want to push down on your extended arms when you breathe.
In fact we do that drill with arms at our sides to work on breathing rhythm and head position. I'm not a particular fan of a lot of head motion when breathing, but it seems to work for SolarEnergy.
The lower you keep your head, the better you will do breathing every stroke. If you lift your head high and look forward a lot as you breathe you are using a lot of force to lift your head and it can tire you out more.
Keep your head low and you will probably find less change between a breathing stroke and a non-breathing stroke.
I have folks do drills very similar to the video above, and it seems to help in that regard. An important aspect of that drill is that you don't want to push down on your extended arms when you breathe.
In fact we do that drill with arms at our sides to work on breathing rhythm and head position. I'm not a particular fan of a lot of head motion when breathing, but it seems to work for SolarEnergy.
