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?
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)
Is this working for you? Can you speed it up where you want it? I have been told (and read on this forum, possibly quoting Ande, "slow fly equals no fly").
I also was told in a video clinic that swimming slow fly will never make me swim fast fly.
So, is this approach helping you attain the speed you want?
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)
Is this working for you? Can you speed it up where you want it? I have been told (and read on this forum, possibly quoting Ande, "slow fly equals no fly").
I also was told in a video clinic that swimming slow fly will never make me swim fast fly.
So, is this approach helping you attain the speed you want?
