The Butterfly Lane

I at 64 , have mastered the slow be sure method of 200 fly.

When I do the 50 fly I feel like I am going really fast, but I am actually going slow. I finally have the endurance to go all out (and put my head down for 3 or 4 strokes - I am faster that way) yet my time is only 31. My kick is very weak - is it possible that could be four seconds or so? This was by far my best stroke as a kid and I can't believe I suck so bad now. My other theory is that most of butterfly development occurs in high school or beyond after more muscle development?

I at 64 , have mastered the slow be sure method of 200 fly. I, at 49, have mastered nothing at all. But I do keep trying. :)

I, at 55, have finally begun to "master" butterfly, thanks to the expert coaching I received at SwimFest '10 last weekend. :bliss: Prior to last weekend, I had never been able to swim an entire pool length of butterfly, but that is no longer the case. Now that I'm back home, I plan on swimming at least one length during my twice weekly workouts, and building from there. I have a long way to go, but at least I've finally begun the journey.

I got this from my old coach. He made a couple of his own add-ins. He was a butterflier and the one who got me into the 200. For the Athlete Who Has It All By KEVIN HELLIKER Like many fitness swimmers, I can go mile after mile of freestyle without stopping. But a single lap of the butterfly stroke leaves me gasping. Of the four strokes swum in competition, butterfly is almost universally regarded as more exhausting than freestyle, breaststroke or backstroke. And therein lies its allure. In an age of ultramarathons, Ironman triathlons and crowds chugging up Mount Everest, long-distance butterfly swimming is becoming a new and less-crowded frontier for fitness fanatics. It's also hugely advantageous, because fly swimming, as it's known, requires enormous strengthening of every muscle in the body, particularly the core muscles in the abdomen and back. The butterfly is a notoriously difficult stroke, but Tom Boettcher is one of a growing number of fanatics who are learning to swim it for miles. He gives WSJ reporter Kevin Helliker some tips for improving his stroke. Tom Boettcher, a high-tech entrepreneur in Chicago, recently swam butterfly from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco, a distance of 1.5 miles, across choppy waters. And summer after summer he competes in the Big Shoulders 5K—a 3.1-mile race in Lake Michigan—swimming every stroke butterfly. "There are times when I'm utterly wasted at the end, and times when I could swim an extra mile or two, depending on how choppy and cold the water is," says the 45-year-old. Swimming 500 meters or more of non-stop butterfly can place an athlete in a truly elite, if unofficial, club. For context, consider that while the longest Olympic freestyle event is 6.2 miles, the longest stretch of butterfly performed in the Games is 200 meters, or one eighth of a mile. Nobody knows how many swimmers are flying for distance these days, and there's no distance-flying regulatory body to set standards such as whether wetsuits can be worn in open-water swims. But the mere sight of a swimmer doing mile after mile or lap after lap of butterfly in competitions otherwise teeming with freestylers garners attention of the sort that merely finishing an Ironman triathlon no longer generates. Dan Projansky has won publicity in half a dozen newspapers and magazines for his long-distance open-water races swimming butterfly. "Everybody seems to think I'm a kook," says Mr. Projansky, 52, an insurance salesman in northern Illinois. It is also said that he gets lucky far more often he did before. People who swim freestyle, the most popular stroke in the U.S. which is also known as the front crawl, are taught to glide through the water in a fashion that creates the sensation of swimming downhill. In the butterfly, however, both arms come forward simultaneously and pull the chest above the top of the water while the feet perform typically a two-beat dolphin kick. More than any other stroke, the butterfly feels akin to swimming uphill. "There's a huge surge of propulsion as the arms pull you forward, then a deceleration during the recovery," says Steven Munatones, a former coach of U.S. Olympic distance swimmers. "Compared with the consistent acceleration of freestyle, fly is like giving a vehicle the gas and then the brakes, gas and then brakes. It's very taxing." As hard as it can be to swim butterfly over long distances, the fundamentals of the stroke can be mastered in a single lesson with a good coach. Swim instructors highly recommend it because the butterfly burns more calories and strengthens more muscles than any other stroke. Fifteen minutes of butterfly can provide similar benefits to 30 to 45 minutes of freestyle, says Mr. Boettcher. Also, so few adults master the butterfly that swimming a single length of it can confer a certain status upon a swimmer. "In a lap pool full of fitness swimmers, one lap of butterfly will turn heads," says Mr. Munatones. "It gives people the impression that you're a more-talented swimmer." An instant legend so to speak.... Helping to inspire today's distance fly swimmers is a recent fitness-world emphasis on strengthening the body's core muscles. Great butterfly swimmers have always boasted powerful torsos. As a world-record-setting teenage girl, "I had such a strong core that I had to wear boy's pants," says Mary T. Meagher, who won three gold medals swimming butterfly at the 1984 Olympics. Now a 45-year-old mother outside Atlanta, Ms. Meagher garnered the nickname Madam Butterfly for having held two world records for nearly 20 years—an achievement that ranks among the greatest in sports history. To strengthen his core, Mr. Boettcher, the distance flyer, says he spends two hours training on dry land for every hour he spends in the pool. The author of a book called Core Training, Mr. Boettcher uses tai chi, ballet and Pilates, as well as exercises such as sit ups, "in order to swim the butterfly optimally." In the water, he trains for hours underwater, propelling himself forward like a dolphin, arms at his side. A different strategy for distance fly has been developed recently by Terry Laughlin, the 59-year-old founder of Total Immersion, a national swim-improvement program. Mr. Laughlin, who has been a competitive swimmer since childhood, says he found early on that he could swim mile upon mile of freestyle, but barely muster more than 50 yards of butterfly. Frustrated, he spent hours in the pool performing drills that he hoped would expand his fly range. But "that goal eluded me for 40 years," he says. Five years ago, Mr. Laughlin says he was studying video footage of Olympics champion Michael Phelps when he noticed that after the young man's chest hit the water, "he simply held a streamline, for a nanosecond, while allowing himself to sink." Employing a similar technique, Mr. Laughlin found that it reserved his strength. Accepting that his torso was less flexible than when he was younger, he also began substituting the frog-like kick of the breaststroke for the butterfly's dolphin kick, even though this movement would be outlawed in college or Olympic competitions. Now, Mr. Laughlin swims butterfly "with no fatigue nor any reason to stop other than a desire to do something else," he says

I, at 55, have finally begun to "master" butterfly, thanks to the expert coaching I received at SwimFest '10 last weekend. :bliss: Prior to last weekend, I had never been able to swim an entire pool length of butterfly, but that is no longer the case. Now that I'm back home, I plan on swimming at least one length during my twice weekly workouts, and building from there. I have a long way to go, but at least I've finally begun the journey. Great stuff! Track how much fly you swim each workout and try to improve it over time. As your conditioning for the stroke improves, you will be able to do more distance per fly swim (25's, 50's, etc) and more fly per workout.

Thanks, That Guy! I swam a 25 both mornings this week. It's the last thing I do before warming down, but I was wondering whether it would be better to do my butterfly practice after my initial warm-up, when I'm fresher? Also, by how much per week should I realistically increase my distance during my workouts? I'm in pretty good swimming shape, so I'm thinking at the very least I need to add more SDKs to my kicking workouts (my group swims freestyle exclusively) and butterfly drills to help with conditioning my "fly" muscles. I appreciate the encouragement and any tips you can share. When to swim different parts of a workout (warm-up, main set, drills. kicking, race pace swim, etc) seems like a personal preference thing to me. Do what works for you. As for the rest, take a long term and conservative view. Set a goal to improve by some reasonable % in the next year, two years, five years, etc. If you get there sooner than expected, then that's a great problem to have, and you then get to recalibrate your goals for the better. The flip side of that is that on this forum, typically when I see people post that they think they can improve something by X% in the next Y weeks, it generally doesn't happen because the timeframe was too short and/or the % improvement was unrealistic.

Great stuff! Track how much fly you swim each workout and try to improve it over time. As your conditioning for the stroke improves, you will be able to do more distance per fly swim (25's, 50's, etc) and more fly per workout. Thanks, That Guy! I swam a 25 both mornings this week. It's the last thing I do before warming down, but I was wondering whether it would be better to do my butterfly practice after my initial warm-up, when I'm fresher? Also, by how much per week should I realistically increase my distance during my workouts? I'm in pretty good swimming shape, so I'm thinking at the very least I need to add more SDKs to my kicking workouts (my group swims freestyle exclusively) and butterfly drills to help with conditioning my "fly" muscles. I appreciate the encouragement and any tips you can share.

Had an idea last week to try some long distance fly as a personal challenge and a great way to cross train for the finswimming and freediving competition that I do (core strength, efficiency). Thought I'd give a 10k open water race with fly a go next summer. Did the 10k two years ago freestyle. Here in Vancouver, we have a 137.5m pool. On Wednesday I tried to see Pete People who play golf have their golf destinations trips. This pool would count as a swimming destination trip. Gosh, I have to swim at this pool one day!

Had an idea last week to try some long distance fly as a personal challenge and a great way to cross train for the finswimming and freediving competition that I do (core strength, efficiency). Thought I'd give a 10k open water race with fly a go next summer. Did the 10k two years ago freestyle. Here in Vancouver, we have a 137.5m pool. On Wednesday I tried to see what I could maintain, and managed only 50-60m of fly at a stretch, before lapsing into freestyle. I think the lack of walls is definitely a factor as they do give you rest and the chance to reset your stroke. I did this over 1000m and felt rather discouraged. Last night after coaching, I jumped into the pool and without really much fuss on my part swam 500m fly non-stop in the pool. After last night's swim, I am quite excited. It is definitely a different style of fly that got me through the 500m without much difficulty. Long glide in streamline and the smallest head tilt to get air. And crucial was getting my chest lower than my shoulders (ie. arching the upper back) on every stroke. It wasn't particularly fast, but encouraging. The long glide seems especially important for letting your muscles stay out of the red zone as even a second helps to recharge them for the next stroke. But given the small margin for error on breathing (head lift/hips falling), swimming in chop sounds grueling! I've found this thread after searching for others who have trained in long-distance fly. Some helpful stuff on this thread. Thanks to everyone. Anyone try longer swims? Anyone stumble across long-distance fly training and technique experiences on the web? If you've heard of any references that I could look up beyond what is here, that would be a great help. Thanks! Pete