Sinking hips during recovery in fly

Thanks a lot Paul for your comments. your hands ... barely reach your hips at the end of your stroke Which direction did you mean, when you look from side or front view? Should I try to make my arms "longer" or to make them closer to the body? 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. Nicely spotted :) When I started with my butterfly drills, I decided to use the same paddles (Speedo Power Paddles, medium size) that I use for my freestyle training. At first I couldn't swim with them, because the hands exit was so bad, it created so much downforce that I couldn't lift my head above the water surface. But, then I "corrected" it and now I can swim "normally" with paddles. Secondly, I tried to do Cavic's hands position 1822 But never managed to do it (not even close :() That's why I would bend my wrist (making almost 90 degrees between my palms and arms) on hands exit. But during the beginning of the recovery, my hands point down, so my fingers are the last to leave the water (which is wrong I suppose). And probably that's why I drag them below the water in the beginning. Later on, I put them in relatively acceptable position, where palms are pointing backward and fingers are horizontal. Probably my first blog post shows better my wrist movement: http://blog.grkovic.com/?p=3 Is there any video that shows in slow motion the correct wrist movement for the recovery phase and hands exit? Thanks for the drills, I'll try to include them in my swimming training. Best regards. - Predrag.

Thanks for the tip Rob. 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. Just to confirm, when my hands leave the water, small finger should be the first part of the hand to break the surface, is that correct? Thanks. - Predrag.

Man, that hurts to watch. It hurts because I am a flier, a hasbeen flier trying to recapture something. But I have no endurance for it now and my kick is weak. I can feel myself down to my last three strokes watching that. Thanks for your honest opinion Herb. I guess you feel like I'm doing my last three strokes before giving up. On the other hand, poor technique like this is excellent for building endurance :) I usually give up after 50m (with sinking hips from the very first stroke) with heart rate around 150/min. I measured time only once, it was 50m per 55 seconds (without jump or underwater kicking). Regards. -Predrag.

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. Thanks Marjorie. You have the point about this. I was also wondering how much of the difference makes only their speed (around 2m/s compared to my 1m/s). Probably my hips would have sunk less with the exact same move if there was double water flow that tends to lift them up. I was wondering many times if it's possible to swim butterfly slow or water dynamics would completely break apart. Do you think Phelps would be able to swim fly with half of his usual speed? 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. Which DVD are you referring to? Does extra kick mean 3 kicks per one armstroke? I used to watch Phelps' butterfly training 1, 2 and 3, but unfortunately they removed them from youtube and I didn't save them :( Thanks again. - Predrag.

Thanks a lot for your long post funkyfish. 1)I think the biggest issue with your fly is that the timing is off (mentioned earlier, and by the way, not "bad advice"). I've seen this comment quite often in this thread. I guess you're all right about it. The only thing I would prefer is if you could point to the moment where you spotted the timing went off (and how the correct timing would be instead). Is it maybe off all the time? Or is it maybe some kind of general filling that you get after years of experience, so you can recognize it but cannot easily explain it with words? 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"). Thanks for this comment. I just want to be sure that you didn't watch the "wrong" video. I put the link into one of my replies just to illustrate how it looked like four months ago (one where I swim in long white shorts). Did you refer to the video where I swim in black briefs? 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. I noticed that my first downbeat finishes before my hands reach my hips. Do I maybe start first downbeat too early? 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." You mentioned that I should not use zoomers but swimming fins. Did you mean those long, soft diving fins? Are monofins good for practicing fly? Thanks again for all your advice and drills. I really appreciate it. - Predrag.

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.

Thanks swimr48, I'll keep that on my mind. Thanks a lot to all of you for your time and advices. I got really many great drills, suggestions etc. I guess it's now my turn to try to apply all this and report the progress in a month or so. Thanks again. - Predrag.

Wow, there's a lot of information here. Body posture is very important in butterfly … next is rhythm. Start learning the posture simply with a push off the wall, in streamline position, maintaining the body on TOP of the water, dip the chest in (just the chest, not the arms) and letting that motion travel down to your toes. Get used to that motion, staying on top of the water. Add your arm stroke, keeping it light and quick. Don't even think about a kick. Think about staying on top of the water (your hips, too). Don't breathe yet. Find the rhythm of that chest dip (hip up), then shoulders up (pelvis down) and don't rush it. When that's comfortable, add the breath by sneaking in a breath when your shoulders come up … not by lifting your head to breathe. Good luck. It's the rhythm. :cheerleader:

Great drill. You can build on that drill to do three left, three right, three full.

All right. First, I have to slightly disagree with your statement of the facts. Your issue begins well before the arm recovery started. Your hips are already too low just a fraction of a second after hands entry (reference, minute 1:06 from slowmo clip). If you agree with this then we have to start analyzing your movements from this point on. Now. Let us immediately drop all pre-formatted thoughts and stick to Newton's Third here for a moment. Which forces could account for this loss in buoyancy? What particular movements are taking place at this particular moment? I see two things: 1. You're raising your head to breathe, then 2. You're recovering the legs to prepare for the second kick The timing of your head action? I'm rather satisfied with it. You did you homework. You documented yourself. You know that breathing in butterfly is something that you need to plan. Therefore you immediately start raising the head to do what I often refer to as : Looking where you're going to breathe before actually surfacing. So to me, that's good. This force brings you down but hey. You have to breathe after all and you seem to be doing this smartly. That leaves me with what I believe to be the main cause for your issue. Look at: Min 0:26; 0:34; 0:42; 0:52 (very apparent there) ... then 1:06 etc All these frames have one thing in common. At the precise moment when you're recovering the legs (to prepare for this second kick), your hips sink by 6-10inch in one fraction of a second. That can not be a coincidence. Now what forces could help you counterbalancing this? Well the only one I can see would be some lift force created by improving the early phase of your pulling. I read few members referring to this. I tend to agree. But if you could limit this "sinkage" by first correcting the leg recovery, less pulling lift would be required to stay at the surface. Less force required = less energy expanded doing this. So for me? Kick is promising. Like RTodd suggested, Lots of potential right there. But in my opinion, you kick as hard on the upbeat than you do on the down beat. The downward kicking causes the hips to go up but the upward kicking causes the hips to go down. Be careful in recovering the legs. BF is a b.tch. You have to be extremely powerful on the downbeat and extremely careful on the upbeat. Extremely powerful on pull and recovery and extremely careful not to splash on the entry. Gotta switch between those extremes within a cycle that lasts 1.5 seconds, while giving the impression that there's no issue at all. That comes with the job. Gotta do gotta do. For butterfly kicking, I like to use a simple drill I created way back then. It's butterfly without the arms (breathing every stroke preferably). I do all my BF kicking like this. It's fast (easily hold 1min/50min) and it tackles the body undulation much more specifically than any other form of BF kicking (especially in regard to the differences between first and second kick). You can accelerate it and incorporate some half or full pulling cycles. All this to learn to better control how much depth and how much amplitude. YouTube- Fly DrillSide Sorry for the longish post. You started me on Butterfly? That's what you got!!