Swimming workout: How to breathe forward in butterfly.

Today's post is another great swimming workout that will help you with the breath in butterfly. Butterfly breathing should be as low as possible and should aim to drive the body forward. If it's not done properly, it ruins the body's streamling and stops forward progress. This causes a great loss of energy, which is essential for swimming all strokes and especially the butterfly stroke.

Read more »

Race tactics for the 200 fly event

The 200 butterfly is a 200 race like any other, so all the suggestions for this type of events apply here too. But swimmers and coaches alike know that this race has something special about it. Swimming a good 200 fly requires aerobic speed that can be maintained, which requires that you'll focus on this type of training. Some additional tips for the 200 fly race are the following:

Read more »

Dolphin kick

The kick used in butterfly is called a dolphin kick because the legs move as one unit, like the tail of the dolphin. This kick is also used underwater during the starts and turns of butterfly, freestyle, and backstroke (and in the fly-back and breast-free IM transition turns) One dolphin kick consists of two parts: the upbeat and the downbeat and swimmers execute two dolphin kicks during each stroke cycle.

Read more »

Madam Butterfly

Mary T. Meagher (born in October 27th, 1964) is an American swimming legend and one of the greatest butterfly swimmers ever. In 1979 she broke her first world record in the 200m butterfly and was ready to race for her first Olympic medals at the 1980 Games in Moscow. However, Meagher, along with the rest of the United States Olympic Team, never gor her chance due to the American led boycott of the Games.

Read more »

Breathing mistakes in butterfly

The butterfly stroke has five elements: armstroke (entry and stretch, outsweep, insweep, upsweep, and recovery), kicking, body position, breathing, and when you put them altogether, timing is crucial. Swimmers tend to do mistakes in each one of these elements and through this blog I try to help them identify these mistakes and correct them. I have already blogged about the mistakes that swimmers do during the recovery (here), when they kick (here), and timing mistakes (here). Today I will go through the most common mistakes during breathing when swimming butterfly.

Read more »

"The Albatross" story

Michael Gross (born 17 June 1964), was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is a former swimmer from Germany. He is 201 centimeters (6 feet, 7 inches) tall, and was called "The Albatross", among fellow swimmers, swimmers fans, and coaches, due to his especially long arms that gave him a total span of 2.13 meters. Gross, who was competing for West Germany, won three Olympic gold medals, two in 1984 and one in 1988 in the freestyle and butterfly events, in addition to two World Championship titles in 1982, two in 1986 and one in 1991.

Read more »

Matt Biondi's story

Matt Biondi, who was born October 8^th 1965, is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic champion, former world record-holder and swimming legend. Biondi competed in the Summer Olympic Games in 1984, 1988  and 1992, winning a total of eleven medals (eight gold, two silver and one bronze). During his career, he set seven individual world records (three in the 50-meter freestyle and four in the 100-meter freestyle). Biondi is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.

Matt Biondi

Read more »