Training for the 200 fly

This is usuallly the agrument against breathing every stroke. But some of us don't have the conditioning in our 40's to be able to do it everyother stroke in a 200 yard or in my case even for most of the 100 yard. As for the breaststroke,many of the swimmers in their 50's will tell you in the late 1950's and early 1960's,people were swimming 100's and 200's almost totally underwater except for coming up for breath at the turn. The AAU ban that because it pose a risk. Remember it wasn't long ago where swimmers where doing dolphin kick almost for the while swim in back and fly. I don't know if the reasons were similar to the ban on *** in the early 1960's or because they felt it change fly and back too much.

I found the training tips and articles in this thread very helpful. One thing that I think was missing, however, was discussion of the head movement in the stroke. The articles spoke of starting your undulation by pressing down with your chest, then hips. While this is an OK discription, I think it misses the starting point. Proper fly undulation starts with dipping the head as the arms are coming out of the water. This actually pushes the shoulders up during the recovery which makes the recovery easier. The shoulders then follow the head as the undulation passes through them and down toward the hips. As the hips are pressing down the head is coming up. The breath is taken just as the arms are completing the push and the head dives back down. Thinking about the head, at least for me, becomes very important as butterstruggle sets in. I find that when this is happening, my hips are dragging and my head is tilting up. In this position getting my arms out and over the water is very difficult, hence the struggle. By focusing on dipping my head it forces my shoulders up and parallel to the water and then my hips come up as well, keeping my body in a more streamlined, though also more undulating position.