Sinking hips during recovery in fly

Your timing is off. YOur head shouldn't be coming out of the water to breathe at the same time that your feet are breaking the surface. It's like you're swimming uphill and your hips have nowhere to go but down at that moment. BOOYA! That's exactly what I said!!! Here's a couple ideas to drill to help with this. First of all, stop kicking (this is a drill). You'll only kick enough to get the movement, but STOP the full kick. You are kicking from your knees, and your fly kick should come from your hips. The Dolphin kick is full body movement, and when you bend your knees as much as you are, then you aren't using the full body. If you do a 1 arm fly focussing only on the upper body and body movement you'll stop focussing on such a kick. -I'm trying to write this to make sense, but I can't seem to get it right. Try it and you may understand what I'm trying to say. Stop tyring to kick so hard. you are kicking too much from your knees. KWIM? You are breathing EVERY STROKE. Breathing in fly is the downfall of the stroke! When you lift your head to breath, you can't get your arms around and over the water properly which means that you drop your hips in order to get your arms out of the water and BOOM, you are vertical in the water. So, when you breath, you HAVE to get your head back down BEFORE your arms exit the water. You'll notice many fly'ers breath to the side; this helps. But if you can start not breathing, you'll never have this problem ;-) 1) make sure you are blowing bubbles. Blowing air out when your head is out of the water is just wasted time and makes swimming harder. 2) Instead of picking your head up to breath, streach out your chin. This train of thought will help you remember to keep your body horizontal. 3) You need to breath durring the pull, and head goes back down at the moment your arms exit the water. Good Luck!!

I had that problem too. The thing that worked for me was tons of core/ab strengthening exercises. I also do a lot of SDK drills and dolphin kicking on my back to feel the burn in those hard to reach ab muscles. I also mentally tell myself to "keep the hips high". Sometimes mind over matter is the best way (for me, when I'm tired.....and I'm tired all the time when it comes to fly :D)

Predrag, I see a fundamental issue that once corrected should help greatly. 1) You are not finishing your stroke. If you focus on just your hands, you will see: a) They barely reach your hips at the end of your stroke and more important than that: b) you start to recover your arms by pulling them forward while your hands are still about 4-6 inches below the surface of the water. Stop the slowmo video at 1:09 and you should clearly see what I'm talking about. This is the source of your dropped hips as you have compensated for the increased resistance of your early recovery by elevating your shoulders to aid your hands exiting the water. Shoulders up=hips down. Also, because your shoulders are coming so high, your body crashes down into the water when your arms come forward, creating a deeper body position, hands deeper at start of recovery, shoulders have to come up more to compensate, repeat. You have a nice side by side comparison on your site of the entry and start of the pull but, in my opinion, you're looking in the wrong place for the source of the dropped hips. There could be other issues but I think the majority of them are a direct result from the finish of your arm strokes. If this was one of my swimmers, I would have them swim repeat 25s of Fly where the only focus is to snap the back half of the pull and finish the stroke past the hips. Make sure that you are snapping at the last 25% of the pull to ensure that your hands are exiting the water at the end of the pull. Take significant rest between 25s (at least a minute if not more) because this is about feeling the finish, not about swimming fast or swimming a certain distance. When the stroke starts to fall apart stop even in the middle of a 25.

Good point Paul, I did not pick up on that. A well known kinesthetic cue would be to deliberately have the thumbs brush the thighs on exit. This would get his hands closer to the midline and further back like you noticed. This could be reinforced with one arm fly drills.

Here is a recent article on the site on learning fly. Perhaps it will help: www.usms.org/.../articledisplay.php Michael Phelps has a DVD out on practicing fly. I've found it useful. What I don't find useful is trying to emulate Olympians racing. I am not in their brains or bodies, I do not have their individual balance (or trade-off) of glide and stroke (and what happens to glide in fly if you start the stroke as soon as your hands enter the water?), I do not have their physique, and so on. One of Phelps's drills demonstrated on his DVD is to take an extra dolphin kick with hands and arms in pre-catch position before starting the stroke.

Greetings predrag, This is what I see: 1)I think the biggest issue with your fly is that the timing is off (mentioned earlier, and by the way, not "bad advice"). 2)There's too long of a pause from when your hands enter the water and when you begin your catch/pull, not sure if this is part of the timing issue but it might be (also not "bad advice"). I think the use of some swim fins (not zoomers) would help quite a bit with the timing issue. The fins will add a lot of power to your kick, which in turn would let you focus on your body wave/undulation. It's hard to explain (for me anyway), but there will be point in the stroke where the timing "makes sense" and the arms, legs, and torso feel connected and smooth, not choppy or "stop/go." A drill that's fun to do w/fins is to start in a streamlined position, take a big breath, then just body dolphin at the surface of the water. Pay attention to how high/low your body is during the undulation phase. You just want to stay at the surface. Play around with this. Do some where the undulation is over exaggerated, and some where you try to remain flat as a board, but are still moving forward. Try not to bend your knees, they will bend on their own without you thinking about it. The main focus is to use the torso/core as the means of propulsion. I'd also try to take your second kick out of your stroke for a while until you get your hips up where they should be. The one kick you should concentrate on occurs when your hands are finishing your pull, right about when they are at your hips. For myself, I've noticed when the last part of the pull is timed with the downbeat of the kick, both help to push the upper body up for a breath and it seems to help in recovering the arms. Another thing to consider is to try 3 or more strokes without breathing. It was mentioned above, but for most people (myself included), taking a breath will naturally lower your hips (not so much for top-notch swimmers, more so for us mere mortals). Swimming segments of no-breath fly will allow you to focus on the timing and getting your hips higher. This is another drill that works well with fins. I'm a big fan of using fins simply because when I learned fly that's what helped me to get the timing together and after that the stroke "felt right." I probably spent about 5-6 years of swimming fly poorly, had one afternoon practice where my coach had me put the fins on, and I got the timing issue corrected that day. Fly became fun (relatively) after that. Don't give up and if at all possible, find a qualified coach or swim instructor and ask them to help you in person. Good luck. :bliss:

predrag, You have alot of the puzzle solved. The two big things I see are rushing and trying to breathe too early and not sinking your chest and head below your arms on entry. You need to catch the water better with a more vertical forearm and higher elbows. Your elbows are sinking. As you complete your catch, your chest should start rising from boyancy. Your pull is too deep and too wide near it's completion. When you complete the pull your hands should insweep more toward the midline of your body. Near the completion of the pull, just as your arms are exiting, you should sneak your breath. Stay low and keep your shoulders low. Recover your arms low to the water surface and have the head enter prior to the arms. Try to lay your arms on the surface of the water and at the same time "kick" your hips to the surface. the second kick can many times be a smaller stablizing kick. Keep your hand wrist at the correct position through the recovery to help initiate the next catch. You have a great kick and you will be real fast once you become flatter and higher in the water. Watch the expert below. YouTube- Michael Phelps - Butterfly 01

I noticed that when my hands enter the water, I try to keep the same position as when I jump into the water, that's why probably my hands go to deep, instead of laying them softly on the water surface. This could be why my chest and head don't go below my hands on my hands entry. That's right. When I say your elbows are sinking, it's because your hands are too close at entry. Because of this you are forced to do an outsweep before you can pull and by this time, your elbows are too deep. They entry should be shoulder width while your head and torso dive below arm level. The catch should be immediate followed by only an insweep to the midline. You are so late in your pull because of this poor arm entry and late pull, that you can't get them to your midline and you are actually forced to pull them out of the water early to keep up with your tempo. Kick harder the second kick of the cycle during the recovery phase, it helps keep your body flat. It also helps to be going fast. How long you can manage this before it all falls apart is the crux of the problem, and the reason why some people never enter the 200 fly. It's OK to use equal size kicks, but like I think david.margrave suggests, making the kick on hand exit large and the kick on hand entry smaller is acceptable and may help. Others have suggested fins, this can help. Long fins or zoomers will work. Your speed will be greatly increased which will allow you to feel the correct hand entry etc.

I don't use paddles for fly training. It's really a body driven stroke and I don't want to get hurt. Absolutely pinkie finger exits.

Rob, thanks a lot for your comments. Your elbows are sinking. I thought I knew what this means, but maybe I don't. I thought my elbows are high enough, especially on side by side photos on my blog, the last one. 1821 Is there anywhere side by side photos of high and low elbows? That would help a lot. Try to lay your arms on the surface of the water and at the same time "kick" your hips to the surface. the second kick can many times be a smaller stablizing kick. I noticed that when my hands enter the water, I try to keep the same position as when I jump into the water, that's why probably my hands go to deep, instead of laying them softly on the water surface. This could be why my chest and head don't go below my hands on my hands entry. Thanks a lot for your advice. And thanks for the video. Is the video, by any chance, part of a DVD? Best regards. - Predrag.