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 have problems with my arms-forearms getting stuck in water during no breath stroke. Interesting little issue here.
I think I know why.
When you breathe, your head is going up. This has a favorable impact on the whole body undulation which in turn facilitates the arm recovery.
Simple solution to your issue is to pretend that you're going to breathe even when you don't. I mean do as if you were going to breathe, but just don't break the surface (with your head) completely. This will have the same impact on your body undulation which will result into easier recovery.
And in the same time, you will truly make both strokes (the one with and the one without breathing) identical (almost), which is what the other members are suggesting.
I have problems with my arms-forearms getting stuck in water during no breath stroke. Interesting little issue here.
I think I know why.
When you breathe, your head is going up. This has a favorable impact on the whole body undulation which in turn facilitates the arm recovery.
Simple solution to your issue is to pretend that you're going to breathe even when you don't. I mean do as if you were going to breathe, but just don't break the surface (with your head) completely. This will have the same impact on your body undulation which will result into easier recovery.
And in the same time, you will truly make both strokes (the one with and the one without breathing) identical (almost), which is what the other members are suggesting.
