This is Brenton Rickard, world medallist in the one hundred and two hundred breaststroke demonstrating
technique. One of the key things I look for is face position where his hands and
feet are together in a straight line. It's important in breaststroke when
swimming it, that you get great distance per stroke. Brenton does a lot of
his work on stroke count, as you look here we don't want too much head
movement and the body really travels fastest just below the surface, as we
said we call this the base position.
In Breaststroke most of the power comes from a combination of the legs and the arms and
with the arms we're looking at more propellor type sweeping motions rather than
pull, push, as you have in butterfly, freestyle and backstroke.
The feet movement is predominantly backwards and together, I think 10 years
to 15 years ago it was more around and together, but now the modern
breaststroker is pushing back and together. It's very important to have
great ankle flexibility and hip and knee joint mobility.
When breathing in breaststroke we want the swimmer to move with the stroke not
to have a separate head movement. He comes up with the arm stroke catching
the water his body neck and back moves, rather than his head bobbing up
and down to take the breath. It is important to look forward when taking
this breath without too much head nodding and interference with stroke
length in front. The modern breaststroker recovers his hands close to the surface.
A number of the famous breaststrokers bring their hands out of just above
the surface at race speed, now what we're watching at the moment is fairly easy
technique but Brenton he is trying to get his hands up just in front of his
chin and keep them close to the surface as he recovers have them forward to the
full extension. At the start of the stroke the swimmer presses outwards and
some of the breaststrokers press a little bit upwards, but it is a wide
position and then it starts to catch in at that catch position is where the head
starts to come up for the breath, so the breath is a result of that beginning of
the in sweeping motion of the stroke.
This shot here shows that when the kick is completing there is an acceleration
the feet must come together, by doing this the swimmer is exacting most power
from the kicking motion. A number of swimmers we see in breaststroke cut their kick
short and do not bring the legs together. I think this causes great inefficiency.
This underwater shot shows the arm stroke again once again full extension then an
outward sweep to catch the water, and then an inward sweep then forward for recovery.
This underwater shot shows how the feet
accelerate and come together and the arc of the backward motion is quite narrow.
The best breaststrokers are doing this it appears and getting a more of a
backward and together motion rather than outward and around together motion as
they were say 15-20 years ago. This shot shows full extension at the front and
also the knees trying to keep them in line with the body rather than drop
them underneath the hips. In breaststroke predominate power I believe comes from
the hip movement and once we connect with the core through our arms it is
important that this is the generating power. Looking at all good breaststrokers
I feel that you need to have your hips up near the surfaces as in these shots
showing Brenton side on.
After the initial extension their hands press outwards and catching the water
the wide position which is outside the shoulder. At that position the in sweep
begins and this is the most propulsive part of the breaststroke. When the in
sweep is occurring the head is coming up to breathe, and after the breath is taken it
is important that the swimmer recovers the hands forward because if this is a
non propulsive phase of the stroke and it's important to get the hands back and
forward to the base or frontal position. Breaststroke is one of those strokes where
I feel it's easy to do the stroke poorly but to do it correctly is extremely
difficult. When teaching breaststroke or developing an athlete to compete at
higher levels I think it's very important that we focus on doing the
stroke well, maybe doing many many drills with it rather than doing lots of it
poorly. Breast stroke can be swam by many
people poorly, but by very very few well.
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