What's going on swim fans welcome to whiteboard wednesday and in today's episode i'm sharing
with you how to swim breaststroke with perfect technique in this video i'm going to break down
all the elements of the stroke including body position the pull the kick streamline
underwater pull outs and by the end of the video i'm going to share with you a few different drills
so you can apply some of these technique elements we talk about so you can swim faster and smarter
breaststroke than ever before now in this video it's really designed to help all breaststrokers
so if you're trying to learn the stroke and you're just getting started or if you're a more advanced
swimmer and you're looking to take a couple tenths of a second off your 100 or 200 breath stroke
you've come to the right place if you guys are new to the channel welcome my name is ferris
betty i'm the co-founder and ceo of my swim pro and we help swimmers all over the world
improve their performance and health both in and out of the water so if you guys are looking
to take your swimming to the next level and swim faster and smarter than ever before
you've come to the right place so make sure you subscribe to the channel like this video
and let me know in the comments what you think about breaststroke now before we get into the
fundamentals and talk about body position and how we should really be developing this stroke
i want to first just dispel some of the myths and talk about why breaststroke is a little bit
different than some of the other strokes you know some people pick up breaststroke pretty naturally
and others struggle with it and we want to make sure that everyone consume breaststroke
and really get the benefits out of this fantastic stroke now there's three main differences between
breaststroke and the other strokes the first is that it is a short axis stroke just like butterfly
meaning you know in freestyle and backstroke if you divide your body with a laser and you kind of
cut through the middle you're actually rotating along that axis those are long axis strokes
breaststroke is different it's like butterfly if you think about it you're sort of pivoting
your body up and down your upper body and your lower body are pivoting separately
from a rotation so that's a key difference and that's why we train a little bit differently
the total body timing is so fundamental that's the second reason in breaststroke just like
butterfly you have to use your upper body and your lower body and they have to be coordinated
with the proper timing in freestyle and backstroke you can essentially just not kick at all
and you can go pretty fast in breaststroke the kick and the pull are both huge and then the kick
specifically the third element that differentiates breaststroke from the other strokes is the kick
in breaststroke you have a frog kick and so you know unlike freestyle backstroke and butterfly
your toes are pointed and so in the kick and breaststroke you have to flex your feet we'll get
into that in more details in just a minute let's talk about body position so breaststroke is unique
in the sense that every stroke starts and ends in streamline if you're not familiar streamline
is the fundamental body position it's where your body has the least amount of resistance moving
through the water your hands are together from your fingertips all the way through your toes
this is what you do every time you push off the wall regardless of what stroke you do whether
it's fly back breasts or free and you really want to leverage the speed of the wall and this is the
fundamental body position for all of the strokes but in breaststroke you actually start and finish
every single stroke in this position and the more quickly you can get to a streamlined position
we'll talk about the timing the more efficient your strokes gonna be and the faster you're gonna
move through the water now streamline is actually two parts when we're talking about body position
there's head position and hip position and so if you lift your head up to take a breath
in breaststroke or butterfly and the short axis strokes what's going to happen is your hips are
going to sink your legs are just going to drag in the water and you're going to move really really
slow if you look at the best swimmers in the world and breaststroke or any of the strokes they do an
amazing job keeping their hips really really high in the water even when they're taking a breath so
the upper body comes out of the water and the hip position remains really really high uh if you guys
are interested i did an awesome breakdown of two world record holders you know lily king on the
woman's side and adam pd on the men's i broke down with the swimming equation how they swim those
world record swims so for the advanced swimmers and the beginner swimmers if you want to see
how the pros do it and how they swim so fast make sure you check out those videos i'll link them in
the description below let's talk about the actual mechanics of the strokes when we're talking about
the pull really it's we're going to break it down we're going to simplify it so it starts
and ends in streamline and what you're doing is you're actually creating a triangle of space
with your hands it actually starts with your pinkies and so your pinkies when your hands you
know you're in streamline and when your hands start to separate it's your pinkies that are
on the top and as you sweep out just past your shoulders you want to curl your fingertips down
and you want to be able to catch the water and you want to get your hands your palms your forearms
really in a vertical position kind of like a freestyle stroke it's not going to be as dramatic
as freestyle and as you curl those fingers out when you go just past your shoulders you're going
to make this triangle you're going to bring your hands in that's when you take the breath
so your bed is down as you start the out sweep and as you curl those hands back in and your thumbs
start to come back together you don't bring your elbows in necessarily but you start to really pull
that water and you bring your thumbs together at that point you're still breathing and you need to
explode your hands back to streamline it's got to be really really fast and so your hand drive
is really what sends your body forward you got to lunge with your whole body and you've got to send
your hands where you know you can have your hands you know at the surface level of the water just
above the water just below the water everyone's a little bit different but really you want to cut
through the water as quickly as possible because this is the path of the highest resistance you're
actually if you think about it you're pushing yourself backwards when you push your hands
forward so you have to make that as short of a time as possible because that's actually the
slowest part of the stroke and you want to send your hands forward you don't want to dive your
hands down you're trying to move forward remember you're trying to get to the other side of the pool
as quickly as possible so you send your hands forward and this really times in well with the
kick and we talked about the kick being a little bit different it's a frog kick and the timing of
the kick if you're just learning it you've got to flex your feet meaning instead of pointing
your toes you're actually going to flex your feet out and you're going to think to yourself up out
around and together this is really engaging your hamstring when you pull your heel up to your butt
you actually engage your hamstring the most and the faster you can snap your heels back to your
to your butt basically and you really activate your hamstrings that is again the highest point of
resistance in the kick and so think up out around and together and you want to really sweep out and
you want to keep your knees relatively narrow you don't want your kick to be massive because if you
open up your legs you're going to create more resistance than you're actually going to benefit
from having a bigger kick so the right balance is about knees at shoulder width so your knees
really aren't separating that much maybe only half a meter some people are even less than that
in terms of how far your knees are actually apart and a great drill you can do with that is if you
just kick streamline on your back and think about keeping your knees underneath the surface of the
water as you're kicking and focusing on bringing your heels to your butt and heel speed is the
key variable of tempo so if you're trying to get faster at breaststroke and you're more advanced
swimmer think about how can you get your heel to bring up your hamstring to bring up that first
part of the kick more quickly because that's the thing that's slowing you down if you can
increase that heel speed you're going to be able to increase your tempo and maintain efficiency
in the stroke now the timing this is maybe the most important part i should have circled
this i want you to think to yourself you're a beginner swimmer even a more advanced swimmer
pull kick glide there's three phases in the timing of breaststroke it's pull we talked about the pull
that's when you get your breath kick glide so when you send your hands forward and you launch
your body forward the kick is assisting in that part and then you're going to glide what position
are you going to be in you're going to glide in streamline it's our fundamental body position
you're shooting for max distance per stroke on every single stroke the duration of which you hold
the glide really depends on if you're swimming you know 25 meters of breath stroke you know
five one hundreds of breaststroke you know 200 meter breaststroke in a race that really depends
how long you're going to hold that glide but every single stroke you're shooting for max distance per
stroke you're trying to get as far as possible take as few strokes as possible in the length
maintaining speed and maintaining efficiency now obviously in the 50 you're going to have a
faster tempo if you're trying to race 50 meters you're not going to hold the glide as long but
the best swimmers in the world are still sending their hands forward and trying to maximize you
know basically getting to streamline which is the path of least resistance as quickly as possible
and then maintaining that for just a split second as you increase the distance to the 100 and 200
then we're going to hold that glide just a little bit longer and the best swimmers in the world in
the 200 long course specifically we'll talk about the difference between short course and
long course but they actually change the tempo within the 200 itself so that's a little bit
fancier big key for all these points is to remember that water is 800 times more resistive
than air so when you're swimming breaststroke it is the slowest stroke because your body is sitting
lowest in the water you have the most drag and that's why it's so important that when you take
the breath and you're pulling you know you don't lift your head up too high you don't dive up and
down you maintain a high body position because the water is slowing you down you want to swim smarter
now let's talk about the pull out when you jump off the diving block or you push off the wall you
get one pull out per length so the way it works is you're in streamline and you can hold this for two
or three full seconds and after you feel yourself slowing down you're gonna do one big arm pull and
you're really gonna pull the water in a straight line and you're gonna send your body forward then
you're allowed to take one kick underneath the water to bring your hands back to streamline
we'll have some great b-roll showing you how this is done you are allowed to do one dolphin kick at
any point before or after your arms pull down so this is a little bit more advanced skill and you
get one dolphin kick a lot of the best swimmers they'll do this before they even separate leverage
the streamlined position and really you want to maintain integrity of streamline if you have a
really really massive dolphin kick yes you're going to pull more water with your legs but
you're going to create more resistance and disrupt that body line so oftentimes the dolphin kick is
really more of a middle sized dolphin kick and the more you practice and the more you train the
more you race you'll get better at determining how big of a dolphin kick it should be that's a
more advanced skill you don't have to worry about that if you're just getting started and if you're
doing more you know 200 this becomes a much more critical component especially in short course
swimming and when it comes to training i really strongly believe that it's all about technique
and race specificity you know in the short acts of strokes whether it's butterfly or breaststroke
if you want to be good at the 200 breaststroke you don't just swim 200's breaststroke right because
you're not able to maintain the technique and race pace that you're able to do and as a result you're
going to be training your body to move through the water in a lower position so you're training
your body to move slower and for these short axis strokes you really have to teach your body how to
swim high in the water so train the body position that you want to have in a race that means you
need to train either at race pace above race pace but i also really factor in race stroke count so
if you know if you're more advanced form and you know how many strokes you need to take whether
it's short course or long course you need to train your body to take that many strokes try and hit a
certain pace and maintain a high body position i mentioned short course versus long course if
you guys are beginners you know no problem short course basically means a 25 yard or 25 meter pool
when we're talking long course we're talking the olympic 50 meter pool obviously it's a lot more
difficult to swim with high stroke integrity and really fast for a continuous 50 meters you
know and in breaststroke for sure you swim a lot faster when you get that push off the wall
and it allows you to maintain uh distance per stroke and tempo a lot easier in a short course
pool if you look at you know some of these guys going 148 in the 200 breaststroke in short course
yards that's a pretty good example of how few strokes they're taking and then in long course
because you have less momentum by the time you get to the end of the 50 you've taken so many more
strokes you know some of these guys are taking five to ten strokes per length in a 25 yarder
meter pool and when you get to long course you have to doesn't matter who you are you're going
to take 20 plus strokes to get to the other end of the pool therefore you can change your tempo
and increasing your tempo by the end of the 50 allows you to maintain that higher body
position and keep your stroke integrity alive so if you'll see really advanced swimmers if they're
racing 200 meters they'll actually increase their tempo gradually and actually pretty significantly
by the end of the race to try and maintain that consistent pacing all the way through the last
150 meters of the race now the moment you've been waiting for if you're looking for some drills to
apply some of these things i have four written out here the first one is streamline kick on your back
i mentioned it when it comes to defining your kick mechanics this is a fantastic way to refine
how you kick it doesn't matter how good of a breaststroke swimmer you are and it doesn't matter
how fast you are in any of the other strokes because this is something that every swimmer in
the world can improve upon you can always make your kick more efficient whether it's you know
getting your heel speed faster we talked about hamstring reflexes catching more water on the
outside making sure that you're not too narrow not too wide having the right body position really
focus on if you're on your back keep your knees under the surface of the water and have really
fast heel speed you can also do this streamline on your front you can put your hands underneath your
bum and you can focus on bringing your heels all the way up so that you tag your hands called heel
tag that's two drills in one for you guys another great drill that works on timing is two kicks one
pull so you're gonna be in streamline you're gonna do two full kicks then you're gonna take a full
breaststroke pull so by adding in an additional kick you're really forcing your stroke to stretch
out and emphasize we talked about pull kick glide instead now with another kick you're gonna go pull
kick kick glide and another pull kick kick glide try and have those kicks underneath the
surface of the water just under the surface to really get that rhythm going uh the third drill
is a little bit more power focused is freestyle kick with a breaststroke pull this is a really
aggressive drill where you're focusing on driving your hands forward this is not a slow drill
it's really not about rhythm it's about power speed and tempo having fast hands really
accelerating you know through the catch and then driving your body forward instead of riding up
and down if you wear fins it'll make this drill significantly more efficient for most swimmers
and you should really only do shorter bursts of that you know 25 meters at a time at the most now
the fourth drill is actually one of my favorites and i am a breaststroker so i love this drill
at any point in the season especially before taper it's called breaststroke countdown
now the way this works is you do 825 so you got you know 25 meter pool or 25 yard pool
and you start out your first 25 is just a cruise you do a pull out and you should you know if
you're more advanced swimmer you know exactly how many strokes you're going to take and so for
me i take five strokes in a 25-yard pool if i'm cruising and and i'll explain if you know whatever
number that you have the next 25 you're gonna take one last stroke so you're counting down so for me
i take four strokes then the third 25 you're going to take three strokes and then two strokes and
after you do four 25s and you took off a couple of strokes uh three three or four strokes ideally
then you're in a really efficient uh timing so to get down one stroke you're gonna have to hold max
distance per stroke you have to stretch out the pull out you're gonna have to be more efficient
and really more aggressive on the extension with your hands getting back to a streamlined position
and then once you've done 425s on the fifth 25 you're gonna count your way back up so you go five
four three two and then starting at number five you're gonna go two strokes then three strokes
then four strokes then five strokes and by the time you count your way back up and you're back
where you started it should actually maybe feel too difficult to go back to where you started
because you're so efficient and you've gotten used to taking less strokes you can do this with 825s
you just with 1025s um if you if you can't take five strokes you know you take as many as you can
so let's say you start out with 12 strokes then you go 12 11 10 9 and then if you can go down
to eight go down to eight stretch it out but you don't want to get stretched out to the point where
you completely stop moving that's not what we're doing you're maintaining a little bit of speed
then you build your way back up 9 10 11 12 and that 12 should feel a lot easier than the first
25 that you did this is really working on timing max distance per stroke if you're a 200 breast
stroker you should be able to do this drill all the time and you should really be confident in
how many strokes that you're taking if you guys are looking for more drills like that
make sure you subscribe to the my swim pro channel on youtube and all of our social media
we also have hundreds of different dry land training exercises and swim drills in the my
swim pro app available for iphone and android and finally if you guys are looking for a community
of swimmers who are focused on swimming faster and smarter than ever before make sure you join the my
swim pro facebook group linked in the description below we have thousands of swimmers from over 100
different countries from beginners triathletes and former olympians everyone's in there focused on
encouraging each other so if you're interested in that make sure you check it out link in
description below and also let me know in the comments if you guys have any questions about
breaststroke or any other strokes or swimming in general i wish you guys the best and happy
swimming you