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 wonder if breathing to the side will help keep your body in better position? According to most experts, no.
However, I trained a butterfly specialist back in the '90s which had a lot of success with it (his 200M bf was under 2min). You'd have to have a lot of neck and upperbody flexibility I guess to see a real benefit in doing this.
I wonder if breathing to the side will help keep your body in better position? According to most experts, no.
However, I trained a butterfly specialist back in the '90s which had a lot of success with it (his 200M bf was under 2min). You'd have to have a lot of neck and upperbody flexibility I guess to see a real benefit in doing this.
