Butterstruggle or Butterfly
By Coach Doug Garcia
We’ve been working on Butterfly quite a bit lately, so it’s time for a review for some of the finer point. Here is a checklist of things to look for in a great butterfly stroke.
- Hands: palms back during recovery, pinkie finger exiting the water first; hands enter at shoulder’s width; hands reaching forward not down; thumbs down during the recovery
- Elbows: locked during recovery; high during catch and pull phase
- Shoulders: above head during catch
- Head: breath early head in before hand entry
- Chest: pressed down during the reach; drops between shoulders; begins body dolphin-ing motion
- Hips: high during hand entry; lowest point during finish of stroke
- Knees: follows the motion of the hips; control the amount of bend on the upbeat; remember a Dolphin has no knees so you should have very little knee bend in your kick
- Feet: always on the same plan; cannot pass each other (flutter)
Breathing is always a challenge in butterfly. Because of this challenge, many people try to go two or three strokes before taking a breath this causes most master swimmers to go into oxygen debt. If you look at the professional athletes, most all of them are breathing every stroke on fly. I encourage swimmers to breath every stroke which helps keep a better rhythm.
Similar to the breathing challenge, is the start. Many swimmers go too far underwater doing dolphin kicks and when they come up they’re already in oxygen debt. While a few under water dolphin kicks off the start are great, be careful not to go so far to cause you to drop your hips as you take your first breath.
Coach Eric commented a while ago about breathing with your butt. As your hands enter the water during fly, your hands should be reaching forward and your chest pressing down, which will make your butt pop out of the water ever so slightly (breathing with your butt). This little draft on your butt is a good indication that you’re doing butterfly with good body position.
When swimming fly and you feel tired and need to break form, I feel its better to go into freestyle with dolphin kick keeping a consistent rhythm. This drill will feel more like butterfly than swimming one-armed fly, which tends to feel more like freestyle.
The only way to get better at swimming butterfly is to not shy away from it.