Really 'spearing' the water in a super-streamlined shape.

This will help:
http://www.spma.net/fastbrst2.htm

Use your super-whip BStr kick to reach and glide in an extra tight streamline

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

Tks.

I'll try it. in the past I was focusing on trying to pull hard, but given my lack of results, I'm guessing that's wrong.

At provincials I'm trying to get our team to swim the max number of events each (5), trying to get the team title. We lost it last year.

I need to lead by example, so probably swimming all four 50's and the 100IM. i.e. nothing I'm good at, but I should win most of them in my AG. It's the breaststroke I'm worried about.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Breaststroke is really about the hips - Keep them up! A tight kick will help - less time with your feet in a drag position prevents you from slipping down and swimming vertically.

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I wrote this, you should read it:
https://www.slowtwitch.com/...n_Swimming_6700.html

I think I see what you mean. I'm usually a lot faster doing breast pull with pullbuoy (and a bit of a dolphin kick, it's hard to not dolphin) than breaststroke swim.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I think it's recovery – getting your arms back out front in the least resistant way possible. I'm always working on that, trying to ingrain a good recovery stroke.

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

I have been getting help from one of the kids on the local D2 team on breaststroke lately. For years I have said no way b/c whatever way I tried to kick my knees screamed at me. After doing a couple of exercises which I'd fail horribly at describing here on the pool deck it started to seem doable. I had no idea I was supposed to dorsiflex my ankles as they come up to the butt.....that in itself made a huge dif b/c I at least had something exposed to push with. I tend to let my right knee/thigh come up under me a bit which is like throwing on a drag chute as you know. Right now I'm just doing a lot of continuous breast kicking with a snorkel and it's actually coming along I have shaved 7 seconds off my 25's for breast kick....must keep hips up is the mantra for me.

i'm shocked at how unimportant the focus has been on the pull thus far. In short she told me 'my stroke is almost purely kick and you can't swim good breast w/o a powerful kick so let's get to work'. I have super average ankle flexibility btw. Next time we are going to start working on blending the front end mechanics into it so apparently my kick is doable now. My all out 25 for breaststroke off a push was 21 seconds last time which tells you how embarrassing it was.....will be fun to see what it is now. I'm certain your breaststroke is at worst a kabillion times better than mine, but figured I'd drop in my recent experiences having been anti-breaststroke for years.

50 breast is so hard because you are going to be tempted to just muscle it. Let me say, that I am not a stroke expert but...

Here is what I concentrate on:

I pull and then I kick. While I pull my legs are still and in a streamline position. As my arms get ready to recover I quickly bring my legs up to start my kick. I try to hold off starting that kick until my arms have begun the recovery enough for me to be "aero". There is a temptation to bring your legs up to prep for the kick simultaneously while you are pulling. The harder you are going the more difficult it can be to avoid that temptation.

For me, the most important thing is to get back on a horizontal plane after each stroke. In this regard it is like the fly. When a butterflier is "dying" you typically see they have stopped getting over the top and have reverted to a washing machine stroke where their hips and feet are staying submerged dramatically increasing drag. For those that are not good breaststrokers, this low hip and feet position can start from the beginning -- even before fatigue sets in. My tip for getting in the right position is to have a slight pike (bend) at the waist during the pull. This sets up a rotation so when you recover you get a feeling that you are diving into the water. Obviously, at the point you need to un-pike, and if you do it smartly, you might get a little propulsion from that.

The drill to bring this home is breast stroke pull with no pull buoy and no butterfly kick. If you have it right, you make good forward progress. Otherwise, you will be dead in the water feeling like you are drowning.

The next most important piece is to make sure you are doing your leg recovery before your kick when you are un-piked. Otherwise, you have your upper legs in an almost vertical position -- lots of drag. It is better to have your lower legs be vertical -- they are in the draft created by your body. The drill for this is breast stroke kick on your back. If your knees are coming out of the water you are doing it wrong. You need to get the feel that you are reaching your heels back to your behind -- not that you are squatting.

Getting the timing right on these two seemingly contradictory tips will be a challenge in a month, but especially the pike technique can come as an "ah ha" and when you have that you see a quick drop.

Obliviously, there is a lot more to the stroke, but these two things can get you a long way. By the way, I am nowhere near the best credentialed breaststroker around, but I have had a few American (and even one world) masters top tens. Because of these techniques, I was able to nearly match my high school/college times (when these techniques would have been illegal) into my mid-40's.

I was coached to keep my face closer to the water, so head in-line and driving forward not up. That's a fix you can do right away. Getting the hips and joint flex for the kick etc takes time of course.

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If it's a 50 breast, you will spend a lot of it underwater doing 2 pull outs. If I were you, work on your streamline, the pullout, and your start and turn. And keep your head down.

Breast stroke is (I believe) the most technically difficult stroke simply because it requires so much power applied in a way no other stroke does. And everything you do slows you down. There's a reason breast strokers have huge pecs.

Over the years the stroke has changed dramatically. In the sixties you were taught to "kick and go over a barrel", now you lift the body quite high in order to take advantage of the lunge you get from the joint forward movement of the hands and a dolphin movement of the body that mirrors in some respect a butterfly entry in trying to use your body as part of the stroke. If you can get that part it's a big part.

The pull has also changed over the years so that what was once palms out is now more of a sculling motion to move the body up in the water. For a 50m you should try and concentrate on turnover speed and the lunge. Head position is quite rigid. When you push off the wall in a streamlined position you essentially maintain that neck angle throughout the stroke (don't look up). It may feel like you are looking down when you breathe but that depends entirely on how high you lift yourself with the pull. Your head should submerge on the lunge.

If you can do the pull, lunge and dolphin movement without a kick and maintain any sort of speed you are doing well. If you haven't the strength, you cannot build it in a month. Shorten the stroke and get aerobic. Work on the kick.

The kick requires knee flexibility and most breastrokers can't run because of knee issues (at least that's my excuse). If you can do a dryland squat with your feet almost sideways and tucked under your bum, that's a good kick

If you have a reasonable kick you should be able to kick a 50 as fast as the best freestyle kickers can kick a fifty (without dolphin kicks by them on the turn). If you can already do that, then concentrate on the pull. If not work on the kick, but don't do any massive kick sets. You only do short kick sets and occasional kick sprints. Otherwise, you'll have no knees.


Good luck.

Thanks!!

I jumped in the pool at lunch, didn't have much time but I did get in a quick set just to see where I was. I usually avoid breaststroke like the plague, so it's no wonder it sux.

after warmup and a quick kick set, did 6 x 50m on 1:15 breast, ie lots of rest, as:

1 - ez pull w/ buoy (:50)
2 - mod pull w/ buoy (:45)
3 - hard pull w/ buoy (:41)
4 - ez swim (:50)
5 - mod swim (:47)
6 - hard swim (:45)

I obviously am working against myself at some point in the stroke. I'll try some of the suggestions next time and see how it goes.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I can flutter kick a 50 in sub 35 with board. I'm nowhere close to that for breast kick.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I got to attend a swim clinic with Dr. Genadijus Sokolovas (aka "Dr. G") a couple of months ago. One of the things he pointed out was that most breaststrokers initiate their kick too late. Starting your kick earlier can help maintain the speed from the pull as you go into your streamline and reduce the dead spot in your stroke when the velocity can drop off significantly.

Mark

We seem to be saying the opposite thing here. I guess it's a matter of when most breast strokers initiate their kick. My assumption was that most people initiate the kick at the same time they initiate the pull. It's the easiest coordination -- my hands start to pull; my feet start to rise. Here is a video of Kosuke Kitajima underwater. Check out where his hands are when he begins to raise his feet. Also check where his hands are by the time he really starts the propulsion phase of his kick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ8jBPC8JHg

Kicking triathletes in the head?

what?! No boob jokes?.....

SH has the best advice for you here, but in general, if your feeling begins to feel like butterfly, then you are heading the right direction. The 50 is really complicated though, not really the same stroke you would use for the 200. I have the distance thing down, but feels like a flailing fish on dry dock to try and sprint a 50.

I read most of the replies and people are right on about technic. Getting the timing of your pull and kick are key and take a LOT of time. Once upon a time, I could swim a pretty decent 50/100 breast. For a 50 yard swim from the blocks, you're probably only going to take 10-12 strokes (I took 10), so you have to make the most of them. Power and glide...but as another said, don't glide too long that your hips drop.
For a 50, your start and turn are pretty much as important as the rest.

Properly timed kick is going to drive you forward as you drive your chest down. Hard to explain but think about initiating your kick towards end of pull so you can use it to propel you forward

As others have said, the hips are critical. There is certainly plenty to think about on the pull, but not as much as body position and timing the kick.

One of the breakthroughs I had was when I started to think of myself as an inchworm; as you pull with your arms you slide your hips forward by bringing your chest up (get a visual of an inchworm with its back arched, the front part on the ground is like your arms, the arched part in the air is your chest, and the back part laying flat on the ground is your hips and feet), you anchor your hips in place with a strong kick, and use that leverage to push through the recovery of your stroke. It's really all about sliding the hips forward across the surface of the water by alternating the arms and legs as pull/push.

A great drill for getting the timing down and hip movement dialed in is doing dolphin kick breaststroke, if I was having an off day I could almost always bring it together by doing a few laps of that drill. You can see it demonstrated here:
I usually did it at normal arm speed which resulted in just 2 kicks per stroke (one on the pull and one on the recovery), but there is a lot of other really good stuff to learn from that video.

When you have all of that down and are ready to advance to the next level, work on making everything one smooth motion instead of the inevitable robotic motions most people learn the fundamentals with (I.e. how you feel like the pull consists of pulling to your chest, then recovering over the water; it isn't two steps at all, rather one continuous circular step).

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I've been watching Gerrard every chance I get. Can't figure it out. He looks slow, but he's certainly not! The last 100 I was in, I sucked a 1:16 - 5 seconds off my best, but it was after the mile. Anyway, the winner in my heat did a :57. Wish I could have seen that.

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.