The Butterfly Lane

I've got a long history with the SCY 200 fly, mostly a love-hate relationship, but it's an event I love to swim, piano and all. For the past 5 years or so, I've breathed every stroke except for the first stroke of the start, but for this season I'm experimenting with a 2 up/1 down breathing pattern for it, including not breathing off the walls. I'm a sucker for oxygen, though, so it's going to be a rough transition. 🤣 I've played around in the water doing some moderately paced 100s alternating between breathing every stroke and trying out the 2/1 BP. I swam them all well off race pace, but have been consistently 1-3 seconds faster with the 2/1 BP and haven't tightened up as bad at the end of each 100. I'm cautiously optimistic that, given what I've seen in the past few weeks of playing around in the water, I will finally break through the 2:20 plateau this year! I'll be chronicling my 200 fly trials and tribulations here as I #1 get back in racing shape from a laid back summer #2 start racing the 200 fly (likely not till October/November) I'll post a follow-up with some race videos from the past couple of seasons later today.

Here's my 200 fly from spring nats this year (I'm the bald guy with tats in the red suit): www.youtube.com/watch Notably, for the 18-19 season, I didn't train for the 200 fly--I trained for 200s in general (I swam all five 200s and the 100 free at nats), but not the 200 fly specifically, so I more or less swam this race for the heck of it to see what I could do without having done specific 200 fly training. I was pretty happy with this race, all things considered. I'd been outside all day in the 95+ degree heat and this was the 3rd event of the day for me, and I flat out ran out of gas around the 165 mark--it wasn't that I locked up and crashed and burned, I just ran out of energy. Minor differentiation, but it was a big change for me, since I'm generally a king of the piano and locking up on the last 50. Besides that, this was a surprisingly good race and was just .5 seconds off my masters PR from several years ago, when I was training pretty much solely for the 200 fly. Here's my masters PR 200 fly from 2017 (I'm in the middle lane): www.youtube.com/watch Here's my 200 fly from the first time I did it at spring nats back in 2015: www.youtube.com/watch I've made a lot of progress since the 13-14 season when I started training for the 200 fly, but my key technique focus areas moving forward will be the breathing pattern as I mentioned in my earlier post, keeping a steady kick, and as a backup plan, figuring out how to seamlessly switch to survival fly while maintaining decent speed if all turns to crap and I turn into Mr. Steinway on the last 50. Any feedback is welcome!

Here's my 200 fly from spring nats this year (I'm the bald guy with tats in the red suit): www.youtube.com/watch Notably, for the 18-19 season, I didn't train for the 200 fly--I trained for 200s in general (I swam all five 200s and the 100 free at nats), but not the 200 fly specifically, so I more or less swam this race for the heck of it to see what I could do without having done specific 200 fly training. I was pretty happy with this race, all things considered. I'd been outside all day in the 95+ degree heat and this was the 3rd event of the day for me, and I flat out ran out of gas around the 165 mark--it wasn't that I locked up and crashed and burned, I just ran out of energy. Minor differentiation, but it was a big change for me, since I'm generally a king of the piano and locking up on the last 50. Besides that, this was a surprisingly good race and was just .5 seconds off my masters PR from several years ago, when I was training pretty much solely for the 200 fly. Here's my masters PR 200 fly from 2017 (I'm in the middle lane): www.youtube.com/watch Here's my 200 fly from the first time I did it at spring nats back in 2015: www.youtube.com/watch I've made a lot of progress since the 13-14 season when I started training for the 200 fly, but my key technique focus areas moving forward will be the breathing pattern as I mentioned in my earlier post, keeping a steady kick, and as a backup plan, figuring out how to seamlessly switch to survival fly while maintaining decent speed if all turns to crap and I turn into Mr. Steinway on the last 50. Any feedback is welcome! Not that I am an expert...but I do have a great coach that has made me into a pretty good flyer. Our coach at Longhorn (TXLA) has us train several different ways and we pretty much train for middle distance races. We do a lot short rest freestyle sets, 100's, 200's on a tight interval. For example last week we did 3 sets of 8 X 100''s free on a tough of interval as you can make. You want to make the set but only get 3-5 seconds rest between each 100. This training will get you endurance which you need to finish a 200 Fly we also train stroke 2-3 days a week as well and another good set is 3 x100 free (interval of 5-8 seconds rest) followed by 6 x 50 Flys' on say 45/50 interval.. we do this for every stroke. This is simulating the last 50 of a 200 as you are tired from the free set and go right into a stoke set Finally my favorite set to train Fly is Drop outs /Drop Down 50's starting at 1:00 and drop a second each 50 till you miss the interval. I usually start Backstroke for the first 8 50's and then with to fly and try to make it down to around 37-36 before I drop out. Again this is simulating swimming Fly tired and that last 50 in a race. Sets like these have helped me a reasonable 200 Fly without dying too much! good luck on your training and racing!

Not that I am an expert...but I do have a great coach that has made me into a pretty good flyer. Our coach at Longhorn (TXLA) has us train several different ways and we pretty much train for middle distance races. We do a lot short rest freestyle sets, 100's, 200's on a tight interval. For example last week we did 3 sets of 8 X 100''s free on a tough of interval as you can make. You want to make the set but only get 3-5 seconds rest between each 100. This training will get you endurance which you need to finish a 200 Fly we also train stroke 2-3 days a week as well and another good set is 3 x100 free (interval of 5-8 seconds rest) followed by 6 x 50 Flys' on say 45/50 interval.. we do this for every stroke. This is simulating the last 50 of a 200 as you are tired from the free set and go right into a stoke set Finally my favorite set to train Fly is Drop outs /Drop Down 50's starting at 1:00 and drop a second each 50 till you miss the interval. I usually start Backstroke for the first 8 50's and then with to fly and try to make it down to around 37-36 before I drop out. Again this is simulating swimming Fly tired and that last 50 in a race. Sets like these have helped me a reasonable 200 Fly without dying too much! good luck on your training and racing! Thanks! My training has been up and down for fly--up until a year and a half ago, I primarily swam on my own, since I would coach my USAS group, have a 1.5 hour break, then coach my USMS group. I swam on my own in that gap 3-4 nights a week and ended up doing a lot of "quality" training...which would devolve into me doing sets like 10 x 50 FL on 1:10 aiming for a 1:1 swim/rest ratio, then dropping that down to 8 x 50, then taking a lot of rest between sets, and so on. There'd be plenty of nights when I'd struggle to hit 2000 yards! In the spring of 2018 I started training with the USAS senior prep group that practices after my younger USAS group and before my masters group. Much better overall conditioning, but I don't have a ton of opportunities to do true FL sets. This season, in addition to the evening practices I swim with the senior prep group, I'm swimming one morning a week with the senior distance group--the coach is an old school high yardage coach, so while my shoulders are complaining about it now just a couple of weeks into the season, I think that'll really kick my butt into great aerobic shape over the season. Even if I don't do a ton of fly-specific training this season, I think I'll have a much better aerobic base and back end for the 200 fly by the spring.

Hi habu, thanks for posting the video! You have a good stroke overall, but there are a few issues I see that you can work on to improve even further. First of all it looks like you are lifting your chest a bit too high in the water when you breathe. Keeping a lower profile will reduce resistance created by the water and help you move forward at a faster rate. You can also work on making sure you finish your stroke completely, - currently, your finish is too early, which is causing you to sacrifice some of the power of the pull, especially in longer distance butterfly. The timing and power of your kick needs some attention and I think that will be key to future improvement - you can see that there is no clear finish of the second kick, and the timing of the kick also isn't quite right. The fact that your hips are not popping up out of the water demonstrates that you are not finishing the kick as much as you should be. Finally, as yourself mentioned, try to build up overall conditioning to help get you through a distance like the 200 without the technique breaking down too much. Best of luck in your continued training!

So let me get some opinions from you folks, here. I'm trying to improve my stamina. Been following the same workouts for abotu 2.5 years, now. The prior ones posted for the Basic Training (I'm a solo swimmer). Typical main set for a 100 Fly is 4 times through a 6X25 set with 20 seconds rest between each rep. Extra 1-2 minutes between rounds. I can do that pretty well on a :35 interval, which would correspond to a 1:00 100. Hit the 25's in :14 for most of it, fall back to :15's for almost all of the rest. May have 2-3 that take me :16 seconds. Trying the USRPT, setting up my goal time as a 1:04, which is basically NQT for my age group, I hit 11 reps before a miss, hit another 7-8, then 3, so I'm done. So being able to hit those times would somewhat correlate with a 1:04 100 time, right? Well......when I do a test set, I just die. Cannot keep that pace after 75. I can sprint a 50 in :28, I can "pace" a 50 in :30-31. So to build my stamina, I figure I can go one of two routes - shorten the interval, or increase the distance. Have not rolled around to a fly workout since I started messing with things, but for the workouts taht aren't really conducive to longer distances (e.g. working on breakouts/hypoxic reps), I have found that I can drop the interval and do fine. On things that are conducive to longer intervals, I have had mixed success. On a 200 IM set last week, rather than doing 25's of each stroke, I was doing 50's. And I really struggled to keep my stroke together towards the end. Was giving myself :30 seconds rest, which became :35. THis morning, however, on a 400IM set, I was able to do 100's, rather than 50's, on :30 seconds rest, and I actually felt really, really good. I've honestly not been tweaking the workouts long enough to know how effective it will be. But I'm curious to know what y'all think. If I were to have a goal of an NQT in the 100 Fly (that's assuming I actually do a meet), would I be better off increasing the distance (and subsequent rest amount between reps), or shortening the rest interval, but continuing to do 25's? If I double the distance of each rep (and halve the number of reps), should I double the rest interval? Keep it same? 1.5 times? 2.5 times? WHat do y'all think? I will likely tweak it to make it work for me, but what do y'all think should be my starting point? If y'all think I should keep doing the same distance with a shorter rest interval, I'll drop by 5 seconds and see how that goes.

I would go the route of more distance .

Saying what works for me for BR, which has similar energy demands to fly. I do some USRPT days, but for me, they don't give enough lactic acid tolerance. Therefore, other days I do half distance(50s for 100 or 100s for 200) with my planned 2nd half split as the goal tome. I give myself enough rest to make the time,shortening the rest when I make the time, lengthening it when I don't. This means I am constantly adjusting the rest, which helps keep my brain working.

My 'go to' fly set is normally 8x25 on 0:40, giving me enough rest to maintain my form. That's when I really try to focus on technique For building endurance for racing 100's, I've been doing sets of 200's where you start out with one stroke of fly and then finish the 25 with freestyle, adding one more stroke of fly every 25. By the time you get to the last 50 it's usually all fly. I like it because you're not digging a hole that you can't get out of and can finish holding good form. I get kidded a lot because I usually do some EZ butterfly for my warm down everyday at the end of practice. Just try to keep it easy & in rhythm.

we also train stroke 2-3 days a week as well and another good set is 3 x100 free (interval of 5-8 seconds rest) followed by 6 x 50 Flys' on say 45/50 interval.. we do this for every stroke. This is simulating the last 50 of a 200 as you are tired from the free set and go right into a stoke set How much rest does that give you for each interval? Since I can't make that interval, I would need to adjust it to my snail-paced fly. Thanks for the great set ideas!