I did some one-arm fly drills this morning and then tried the kick, kick, kick, kick+pull drill that you suggested and it felt like it really helped me figure out when to breathe. Then, when I tried to swim full fly, I managed 8 x 25, actually making it to the wall! A couple of caveats: I took lots of rest after each lap (like 30-40 seconds) to get my heart rate down (was hitting about 152-156) and I am not sure how pretty it looked, but it definitely felt more fluid and powerful once I was able to breathe. I think I had been breathing too late (when my arms were coming forward past my ears) and this was causing neck discomfort and also incomplete inhalation. So along with the effort of the full-body movements, I was also getting insufficient oxygen into my system on each cycle. So 15 m, i.e. about 10 seconds, was my maximum distance because I was essentially anaerobic. I am going to stick with the drill you suggested (which I wrote on my workout sheet as a "monty") because it felt like it helped a ton with the the timing of the breath - it made me link the forward tilt of my chin to my kick, not to my arm movement. I need lots more practice, but this felt like a huge breakthrough.

Thanks to all the STers who have offered their advice, I really appreciate it.

In terms of timing breathing, maybe Monty, Jason and Tallswimmer can comment, but once I moved my breathing closer to when my head first pops up in breast stroke (relative to EVF catch in both), the better the rest of my body could cope and I got to a better amplitude. You are right if your head is still up when your arms are already past ears on recovery, you will way high with head and shoulders and hips and legs will be way deep like a drag chute when at that phase you want your upper back already flat.

Hands just out head getting ready to dive in



Head way in, arms following and catching up to head, you can also see because his back is not way high, his hips and butt are not way low creating drag. They are really shallow. I am not sure what his knees are doing that far apart....maybe some of the lifetime swimmers can comment, but this Phelps so I guess he can do whatever the heck he wants (maybe he gets some propulsion letting knees go apart and squeezing them together like in breast stroke???)

I was thinking about what makes fly so much fun.

I think it is because it is quit a bit different from most of the other activities we do.

Maybe this is because there only two speeds: sprinting and drowning.

I suppose there is not a real risk of drowning.

But DROWNING feels possible- once your form breaks down, your legs drop, you are gasping for air, and bobbing up and down.

It is a bit like doing a really hard rock climb - where you are a bit uncertain of your gear - and you are struggling blindly for the end.

Or maybe a bit like sex- except the middle part is painful and frightening.

(which I wrote on my workout sheet as a "monty"//


I love it!! Glad you were able to implement in the pool what I was only able to write on paper here(virtual of course). Like I said, to me this is the single best drill that mimics actual fly swimming, without the bomb that real fly explodes on you before you even get a chance to learn it properly. The one arm stuff is fine and dandy, but you dont have to actually lift yourself out of the water with two hands/arms, and that is the whole point to fly vs free. As you progress with that stroke pattern, just lessen the kicks you take while gliding until it is just two. Then you have the actual pattern you will use once you do "real" fly.


But even when you have mastered that, this pattern will always be there for you when it is early season and you haven't done fly in a long time. The other 3 strokes are easy because you can do them easy and hold form, fly is a separate animal all tighter and needs some help to just be able to do the dam thing in any type of set..

Strong disagree there - real breastroke is hard as hell. Floaty, old lady in a flower showercap breastroke is easy, but competitive breastroke I find much harder to get back to than fly after extended breaks. I'll pin this til I get back in a pool someday, having been out since labor day, and a memorial day opening is probably my next chance...

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

But a least you can pretend to do breaststroke when you are trashed and out of shape, fly out of shape is like a surfer tomb stoning, straight up and down bobbing with no resemblance what so ever of the original stroke. I recall the last 25 of some 200 flys doing the tomb stone...

Ha! I had a teammate in college who was a 100 freestyler, and we had to plug the lineup at a meet in the 200 fly. He took it out like a bat out of hell. And then the piano fell on his back. 9 strokes from the flags to the wall at the finish!!!

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

The other big pay-off is that it makes freestyle feel way easier when you go back to a free set.

In all the other strokes, I find it quite easy to breathe, even when I am going slowly. Whereas in fly if you don't get sufficient power in your catch/pull then you don't get to breathe, because you tilt your head forward and meet nothing but water. It means there's a big incentive to err on the side of "too much power" (because at least that way I can breathe) and what I am trying to figure out now is how to get just high enough to breathe, without the enormous energy investment. I'm definitely making progress - I was able to swim a set of 4 x 100 IM this morning and there is no way I have ever been able to do that before.

Nice work... breathing eventually will not take power, with practice you'll find that your pull, and the finish of your pull pushes you/your chin forward to breathe. Keep working hard, and enjoy the process.

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

For breathing without needing power, would the 1 stroke fly (with breath), one stroke breast drill help with the timing of the fly breathing and the appropriate body undulation or is this more of a drill for breast stroke?

Nope - that's a catch drill. The drill were talking about last week, with a pull and no overwater recovery is the way to work the push forward, IMHO. Envision surfing your chin on the water as you finish the power phase of your pull.

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

I would be on the bandwagon of encouraging triathletes to learn fly. I swam fly as a high school swimmer, and I had to essentially re-learn it as an adult. Every new season it takes some work to get it down. For me, the fastest way to learn what I an doing wrong in my freestyle is to fly. And the fastest way to get a fast freestyle is to integrate fly sets. It's like adding strength sets to any workout. You very quickly learn where the dead spots are in your stroke with fly, and are forced to work them...and the core strength developed is very helpful for freestyle. I personally find it is easy to half-ass the transition from catch to pull with freestyle, and just take a nice long breath, creating over rotation. If you half-ass that same transition with fly, you will drown. It forces you to have consistency in power through your stroke, and it forces you to have good body position. The biggest mistake I see in adult learners is that they tend to have way too much vertical movement and pull their head up way too high, while simultaneously dropping their hips.

The way I learned.
First in High School the only person on a swim team taught me the mechanics. She took me into the shallow end and we practiced from a stand still first with the arms then with the kick. I don’t remember how long that was but we ended up putting it together.

Secondly in College I would go to the swim meets or swim practices (I was a lifeguard) and watch the best girl on the team (she won conference titles) swim and then after would simply visualize her swimming as I swam. I visualized matching her rhythm.

Finally I simply always incorporate into my swimming. Every week I have a set of IM from 50’s up to 200’s.

I think the key is get help from someone who knows the stroke well. If my small high school in the middle of farm country had a butterflier in the school there is one anywhere there are pools with painted lanes and lane lines. Seek them out.

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Dave Jewell
Free Run Speed

A lot of what you’ll need to do will depend on your body type. Is your torso long or short? If it’s long (as a percentage of a your height) then this will be a little easier. If it’s shorter then you’ll need to do things a little differently than traditionally advocated.

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Can you make some suggestions for the long limb short torso runner body people. I am in that category who are also hard to fit on a tri bike but have the advantage of infinite cooling capacity in hot racing.

Depending on how you are in the water and I’m making these recommendations blind, I would say that breathing every stroke in fly will penalize you more than someone who has a longer torso. You’ll probably need to get a little bit of a higher turnover and you might want to even consider breathing to the side, although you’ll give up a little front end speed with that choice.

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Thanks SnappingT. I am definitely faster breathing every second stroke....until I am not! Basically regardless of the race is the first 50m is every second stroke breath and after that it is every stroke (maybe 75m on a 100m depending on what races happened earlier in the day and what comes next). For 400IM breath every stroke on the fly leg. I have never tried breathing on the side (well I have but every time I tried, it totally screwed me up but back when I did my breathing timing was wrong (I was breathing with my arms already in the air well into recovery, which obviously wont work. I think my breath timing is more correct now so maybe when I get back in the pool after the current lockdown ends, I can give it a whirl.

This was an awesome tip - I tried it this morning and discovered I can still breathe with my chin in the water. I had been lifting my head way higher to breathe. It meant I stayed a bit lower to the water and presumably used more of my propulsion to move me forward and less to move me up and out of the water. I took several seconds off my 100 IM today (still crap and slow, but down from 1:53 to 1:48 for a set of 6 x 100 IM leaving on 2:30).

I have another question for you - what is the time difference between your 100 free and your 100 IM when swimming sets of each? I swam 6 x 100 of each this morning and the IMs were 1:48-1:50 and the free was 1:31-1:33; I was wondering if that is a "normal" differential (17 seconds seems like a lot to me!).

Excellent! I’d say 5-8 seconds/100 on the same effort would be about what I drop off, but I was (am?) an IM specialist, so if you have greater relative weaknesses to your free it’ll go up.

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

When you factor in the speed difference (I think you are about twice as fast as me) an 8 second drop for you equates to a 16 second drop for me, so maybe my times are in the right ballpark. Looks as though I should aim to close the gap to 10 seconds if possible (and not by just swimming my 100 free slower!), which means aiming around 1:40-1:43 for the 100 IM repeats.

what is the time difference between your 100 free and your 100 IM when swimming sets of each?
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For me, when I'm in tri-shape, my IM's are about 7-10 sec per 100 slower than my freestyle sets, assuming a cruise interval. And, honestly, most of that time difference is from the breaststroke. My fly and back legs are within 1-2 secs (per 25) as my full freestyle. Then that damn breast hits like a drag suit while wearing sneakers.

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

This delta will also be dramatically impacted by fly to fly, fly to back, back to back, back to breast breast to breast and breast to free turns and underwater (remove stroke to stroke turns on 100IM but applies to 200IM and 400IM). but I think we can all strive to be at 10 seconds slower Delta per 100m relative to Tallswimmer's 5.

Looks like I am stuck on land sports and locked out of pool for another 28 days minimally as our local lockdown for further extended. So no chance to practice the suggestions on this thread for a while . Honestly not being able to swim is the worst part of the pandemic. I can handle work from home (it sucks but whatever), no triathlon racing, no visiting family, no visiting friends, no restaurants, no shopping no travel. But no swimming really is somewhat unbearable. Even when I exclusive did triathlon it was almost never that I went more than 3-7 days without getting in the water.

Anyway, keep flying and reporting back so that we can keep reading and learning what we can try when some of us get back in the water

100% agreed. Breastroke is hard AF when you are doing it remotely correct.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/...eoesophageal_fistula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_palsy
2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

I've found this thread really interesting as i am also an AOS and have been working to learn the strokes for a few years now. If possible, I suggest you film yourself swimming and review with your coach or post here. While I expect a good coach does not need video to figure out what you should work on, it can be hard in masters to get consistent feedback, so I think the video can help get some focus.

I was able to get filmed just before everything shutdown and discovered all kinds of problems with my fly (and other strokes and turns and underwater...). Turns out I do three kicks per cycle! Had no idea. no idea at all. I think this comes from difficulty translating drills into full swimming. I also make this strange inward scull and point my palms at the other side of the pool just after entry. The video was very revealing!

Unfortunately, that was close to the last time I was in the pool and the Masters coach I knew best moved to a new location for work (good thing for her, less good for the masters club). Maybe I'll be swimming again later this year and can start to regain some pool fitness.

Here is the video: