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?
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Former Member
In fact we do that drill with arms at our sides to work on breathing rhythm and head position.
For what it's worth, the reason why I perform this drill arms extended in the front, is that because it's much faster. Therefore, it allows me to use this drill as a replacement for pure kicking during fast kick sets (e.g. sets of 50m off 1min where I touch the wall at 45sec). That's the main reason.
However, several swimmers might find it easier to learn the drill with arms along side the body, for the reason you smartly referred to: this prevents the swimmer from using his hands/arms to breathe.
In fact we do that drill with arms at our sides to work on breathing rhythm and head position.
For what it's worth, the reason why I perform this drill arms extended in the front, is that because it's much faster. Therefore, it allows me to use this drill as a replacement for pure kicking during fast kick sets (e.g. sets of 50m off 1min where I touch the wall at 45sec). That's the main reason.
However, several swimmers might find it easier to learn the drill with arms along side the body, for the reason you smartly referred to: this prevents the swimmer from using his hands/arms to breathe.
