Butterfly Finishing Touches

Front Crawl Backstroke Breaststroke Butterfly Tumble Turns Training Aids Butterfly Intro

When swimming butterfly to make your arm pull more effective; instead of just pulling straight back, trace a large keyhole shape in the water so that you have a long stroke with more water to pull against (see the section on front crawl efficiency). So start with your hands quite close together, begin by pulling them away from each other, then curve them in towards each other and then out apart again before taking them out of the water. Advanced swimmers would also tell you to stop the exaggerated head movement, i.e. putting your chin on your chest to go down and lifting it back as you surface. In butterfly you should try to keep your chin close to the surface of the water to stop the up and down motion we were trying to induce in the early stages of the drills. The problem is that many people lack the flexibility to draw both arms well back out of the water at the same time and, if that sounds like you, one thing that really helps is to keep your head down – and then you obviously have to pull your head back up to breath. The solution? Improve your arm flexibility. Butterfly Kick A butterfly kick is an undulation of the torso and the legs in a vertical plane it starts with a drop in the hips, then the knees and finally a flick downwards with the feet. If you want to practice it try the following underwater (you can’t do fly kick effectively at the surface). Imagine your legs are bound together, or even do bind them by cutting the top of an old swimming hat and using it like a large rubber band, push off the wall well below the surface with your arms stretched out in front of you. You’re not allowed to pull your arms back, you can’t move your legs up and down separately. How are you going to propel yourself forwards? - The only way you can is a butterfly kick – a snake, or wave like undulation in the body and legs