Swim breaststroke faster !

Hello ,

I was reading my yahoo answer post and found my reply to a asker about swimming breaststroke. It is abit technical but once you grasp the concept you should be able to swim a better breaststroke competitively or leisurely too ( sometimes, you just want to be swimming faster leisurely in breaststroke , than the guy who is struggling/swimming frontcrawl next lane to you, hehehehhe :) )


Asker : How can I get faster in breaststroke?
I am so slow how can i get faster.
2 years ago


My reply :
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Like most of the answers here , one of the important thing is to glide
thus the timing is important and the optimum glide time is different from person to person , the best way to gauge the optimum glide time is to

time your breast stroke 5 strokes and your overall time to swim one length ( say 25m pool )

say your five stroke is 6.7 seconds and your total one length is 20 s

and the second try, you glide longer , say 7.2 seconds for five stroke and you still do 20s .

so obviously , your 2nd try is better and you should keep that stroke rate .

Also, you can do drills. in fact this is very important

1) two kicks one pull ( remember to glide , focus on power kick )
2) two pulls one kick
3) breast stroke pull dolphin kick
4) back breast stroke ( body faces upward and do breast stroke kick )

Remember when you glide, you should put your arms BEHIND your ears and not beside your ears like most beginners :) , the difference is huge !

cheers
Source(s):
20 years swimming experience , 8 years competitive swimming at state level , 7 years part time coaching ( beginners to advance ) experience