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
I hope I am not being too redundant (I am truly sorry if I am).
Like I explained in an other Fly thread, I have been (successfully) working on an innovative approach to Butterfly for the past 3 months.
I mainly train (and trained) as a Cyclist but I intend to resume intensive swim training by late september. In preparation for this, my current swim schedule involves 1 or 2 workouts per week, 1 kilo each.
This is what I mostly do. 5x200 butterfly slow and relaxed. My purpose is to be ready by september to do a lot of base mileage (in a squad) at my specialty stroke (Butterfly of course).
These 200 are swam at a pace I could hold for a full kilo. And this volume done at low intensity allows me to perfect the following:
- Breathing without spending energy in doing so
- Reducing drag resistance
- Improving my pulling and more importantly, my arm recovering action (this aspect can be problematic during a 200bf race)
Note that during these 200s, I breathe every two on the first 50, then every stroke for 150m. I am not suggesting that you should mimic my stroke mechanics since it probably has flaws related to swimming that slow, but I just post this as a proof that it is indeed possible to develop a *Base endurance* sort of slow butterfly that allows for improving a lot of energy efficiency aspects (breathing, drag etc).
YouTube - Base endurance Butterfly - Full stroke (Side View)
I hope I am not being too redundant (I am truly sorry if I am).
Like I explained in an other Fly thread, I have been (successfully) working on an innovative approach to Butterfly for the past 3 months.
I mainly train (and trained) as a Cyclist but I intend to resume intensive swim training by late september. In preparation for this, my current swim schedule involves 1 or 2 workouts per week, 1 kilo each.
This is what I mostly do. 5x200 butterfly slow and relaxed. My purpose is to be ready by september to do a lot of base mileage (in a squad) at my specialty stroke (Butterfly of course).
These 200 are swam at a pace I could hold for a full kilo. And this volume done at low intensity allows me to perfect the following:
- Breathing without spending energy in doing so
- Reducing drag resistance
- Improving my pulling and more importantly, my arm recovering action (this aspect can be problematic during a 200bf race)
Note that during these 200s, I breathe every two on the first 50, then every stroke for 150m. I am not suggesting that you should mimic my stroke mechanics since it probably has flaws related to swimming that slow, but I just post this as a proof that it is indeed possible to develop a *Base endurance* sort of slow butterfly that allows for improving a lot of energy efficiency aspects (breathing, drag etc).
YouTube - Base endurance Butterfly - Full stroke (Side View)
