Improving Butterfly Technique (part 4)

I found a very interesting article on GoSwim.tv about different styles of hand entry in butterfly and decided to make an experiment and find out which way I swim more closely (if any).

Full video of my butterfly (front view and side view) in slow motion:

From the photos below, it looks like I swim more similar to left ones than the right ones. According to the article, 90% of people swim that way. It’s classical outsweeping arm stroke. Since I’m still a beginner, I thought I could still change my style and maybe try the right one, which is referred to as “hook” style in the article. Cavic swims this way and his technique is such a challenge – so soft and smooth and without excessive undulation.

Regarding the photos below, I would prefer if the pictures from GoSwim.tv were taken simultaneously from front and side. I had a problem to find the very exact moment in my video. I noticed that my head goes up much earlier than for the swimmer in the rest of the photos. I don’t know if I’m breathing too early or maybe the video on GoSwim’s sequence was actually non-breathing stroke.

In my video, I can spot some of the problems:

1. Fingers are probably too much apart.
2. Hands don’t really enter the water at the proper angle, they are almost extending the arms.
3. At some points, like in the second photo, hands kind of try to “avoid” the water, judging by their angle.
4. There is also a moment where I move my hands forward during underwater part of the arm stroke, probably trying to grab as much water as possible to get me above the water. It looks wrong (it can be spotted in the side view video)
5. Hips drop big time during the first half of the recovery. This is much more visible in my side angle video.
6. Legs are slightly assymetric.

I put both front view and side view videos in real-time speed below:

Regarding the hips sinking, I thought that the problem was that I relax my hips flexors when I bend my knees (which also looks wrong) during the second kick upbeat. I tried yesterday to correct this but ended up with “long torpedo” position. As soon as my hand go above the water, my hips sink. The video is very noisy because the light was poor, so I didn’t post it here.

2 Comments

• 

  By Glenn, 2010/01/08 @ 23:15

  I think something you can work on is limiting the amplitude on your stroke. From the side, it looks just a bit too much up and down. Try to send the hands more forward than down, and try to avoid bending the knees quite so much for the kick. Nice video though.

• 

  By Predrag, 2010/01/10 @ 22:51

  Glenn, thanks a lot for your comment.
  Just to be sure that I understood you correctly, when you say:

  Try to send the hands more forward than down

  do you refer to hands entry? Some people on USMS recommended to lay my arms on the surface of the water and then to go with my head and chest below my arms and to start the pull from that position. Instead, my hands entry looks more like jump into the water.

  About the knees, I know the theory that the kick must go from hips, but don’t really apply it in practice. I will work on it definitely.

  Thanks again.
  Regards.
  - Predrag.

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment