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?
in freestyle, its pretty much given that the act of taking a breath slows you down. is this the same for fly? Your head needs to come out of the water to take a stroke, what difference would it make picking your face up out of the water to breathe vs leaving it in (causing drag).
I'm a decent flyer and I've noticed on sprint 25s and 50s I typically swim faster breathing every stroke than not. Thats obviously not the case in freestyle.
in freestyle, its pretty much given that the act of taking a breath slows you down. is this the same for fly? Your head needs to come out of the water to take a stroke, what difference would it make picking your face up out of the water to breathe vs leaving it in (causing drag).
I'm a decent flyer and I've noticed on sprint 25s and 50s I typically swim faster breathing every stroke than not. Thats obviously not the case in freestyle.
