I have the lofty goal of being able to go 50-100 LCM fly without toys. I can currently go about 25 yards. Can anyone help me devise a plan day by day of what to do to strengthen my shoulders/body enough to be able to do this? I do have fairly good rhythm - I used to race the 200 fly as a kid & can still kick fly well, and of course, I am most impressive when I wear my little zoomers - but even with zoomers, my arms start to die, and then I run out of breath around 37.5 meters. Any great ideas out there? Thanks!
After each stroke, hold & glide for one sec. then go for the next stroke.
I went 1,000 yards doing this!!!!!!!!!
Eah, that's what I do at about 37.5yds/mtrs - trying to get a 50 in with a continuous stroke.:)
One of the the things my coach told me that really helped was to stop trying to pull myself up on each stroke, especially when breathing. You sometimes feel like you need to pull yourself up so those arms can get way out of the water. Well, don't worry so much about the arms fully clearing the water on the recovery, especially early on. Keep them relaxed and let touch the water a little. Eventually as you get better you will clear the water without even thinking about it. Just concentrate on minimizing your up and down, or floating as you do the fly. Yeah there will be a little up and down of the chest as you do the body dolphin but let that be a natural part of the dolphin kick rather than a conscious effort to pull yourself up. Think pulling yourself forward.
With plenty of rest? Like when I stop gasping for air? Probably 10-16.
I think that working to slowly increase this number, and slowly decrease the amount of rest needed between 25's, will result in being able to conquer longer distances.
My fly endurance improved when I quit relying on my triceps and focused on getting my lats into it. I also do better with a ballistic recovery instead of pulling the arms forward.
I do a lot better breathing every stroke not jutting my chin out but keeping my neck straight/aligned. I have lumps in my thyroid that make it difficult to breathe when I hyperextend the neck. I can't recover with my face in the water due to some flexibility limits; I do have to have body undulation to avoid dragging the arms.
Getting the body rhythm right (with some natural buoyancy) made it so I don't need to rely on a punishing kick just to get high enough for the recovery and breath. My stroke is flatter than average. I love swimming breaststroke with fins/dolphin kick for getting used to the balance aspect of the short-axis strokes.
My kick is almost non-propulsive. I just use it to get my body balanced and to finish the stroke. Even wearing fins, I don't kick much. I only have 45 seconds worth of hard kicking before I blow up.
Everybody has different situations so the classic rules may not work best for you. Try different things.
Based on my recent weeks of working up to the 200 fly, I have the following offerings:
1. Make sure you are kicking from the chest down. Starting small with fins, 25 at a time and gradually working up to 200m/yd continuous, then doing it without fins really helped my fly when I started back at it last year. Although if you have a good kick already this might be redundant advice.
2. Like Orca said - glide with your arms outstretched at the end of the recovery to keep the stroke long.
3. Keep up the forward movement when you breathe. I think I actually used to stop dead for a split second!
4. Completely empty your lungs of air before breathing. I only realised I wasn't always doing this a couple of weeks ago, and that I was getting all short of breath and tight in my chest becasue my lungs were still full and I was trying to breathe more air in. I mainly breathe every 2, but am switching to a 2,1,1, pattern for the 2nd half of the 200 so I can keep up the speed. However if I start out with breathing like this, I somehow end up short of breath, even though I'm breathing more often - go figure!
5. Build up gradually 25s, then 50s, then 75s, then 100s. I actually did these on a really long interval, so I could complete the total set, and each week I kept the total distance the same (eg 8 x 50 for a couple of weeks, then 6 x 75, then 4 x 100)
6. Don't worry about how fast you do it, warm up well beforehand and relax.
It was a huge shock to go from swimming SCY to LCM a few weeks ago, I just had to stretch it out and wait for the end of the pool.
