Everything You Need To Know About Butterfly

If you've ever tried to swim butterfly, you know. It's arguably the toughest stroke of the four. It uses every muscle in the body and can leave you totally gassed if you aren't in shape for it. So, what crazy person decided that butterfly should definitely exist? Well, I'll tell you in a sec. But first, here's a quick recap on how butterfly became this. It turns out that butterfly got its start as a variation of breaststroke. In the 1930s, swimmers and coaches started experimenting with breaststroke technique and discovered that it was faster if the swimmer recovered their arms over the water. In this early phase, swimmers still did the breaststroke frog kick, just their arms changed. In 1933, American swimmer Henry Myers was the first to use this new stroke technique in breaststroke competition, much to the official's confusion. He argued that his stroke still fell within the breaststroke rules at the time, and so the butterfly trend was born. For the next 20 years or so, breaststrokers raced with a double-arm over-water recovery and a breaststroke frog kick. In the mid-1930s, American swim coach David Armbruster added a dolphin kick to the over-water recovery. Game changer. And in 1945, Japanese swimmer Jiro Nagasawa was the first swimmer to use the butterfly arms and dolphin kick in competition. And finally, in 1952, World Aquatics made butterfly an official stroke category. And in 1956, butterfly was contested for the first time in the Olympic Games, and we haven't looked back since. I think I'm speaking for the majority of swimmers when I say that fly is not the most popular stroke at practice. It's challenging, it's tiring, and it's a great way to add some spice to your workouts. So what makes good butterfly? It comes down to proper timing and a powerful stroke. Let's start with your body position, and this applies to most strokes. Make sure that your body position and head position are on point. I see so many swimmers who are struggling to get faster, and a lot of it just has to do with a poor body position. So let's fix it. You want your hips to be high in the water and your head to be in a neutral position. This creates the best baseline for your stroke to start with. Now let's look at the butterfly pull. With a few quick fixes, you can increase the power and efficiency of your pull by a significant amount. You want your hands to move at the same time. They should enter the water relatively flat with minimal splash, right in line with your shoulders. You want to enter the water with your middle and ring finger first. Then you'll start pulling. Bend at the elbow and point your fingertips down toward the bottom of the pool and start to pull straight back, keeping your elbows nice and high the whole time. This is our early vertical forearm pull, and it essentially turns your hand, wrist, and forearm into one giant paddle that can pull a ton of water. Try to keep your elbows above your hand for most of the pull. It's much easier on your shoulders than pulling with a straight arm. Try to pull straight back instead of using the old-school S-pull. It's not as efficient. Eventually, you'll extend your arms straight when your hand reaches your hips to start the recovery phase. After finishing the underwater part of your pull, it's time for the out-of-water recovery. Sweep your arms out wide and return to your starting point. Keep your hands and arms relatively relaxed and close to the surface of the water. One last thing on the pull. Don't squeeze your fingers together. Instead, keep them semi-relaxed with a few millimeters of space between them. This can actually increase the power of your pull. It may seem weird, but that space can actually help you swim faster. To practice your catch and pull, try the butterfly arms and freestyle kick drill. It makes the pull and recovery easier since you don't have to worry about the butterfly kick, but don't forget the high elbows and early vertical forearm. Make sure your legs are kicking freestyle fast so your hips are high in the water and you keep your momentum going. A fast kick will also help you feel the power of your arms surging ahead as they recover over the water. You can also use fins for extra help. Next up is the kick. I see so many swimmers struggle to get their kick timing right in butterfly, so listen up. When you kick in butterfly, keep your legs together and toes pointed. To get the most out of your kick and create the best rhythm in your stroke, I recommend thinking about butterfly as having two key kicks. The first kick helps propel your arms out of the water during your recovery, and the second kick keeps you moving as your hands dive forward to start your pull. Focus on kicking both up and down here. A lot of swimmers focus only on the down kick, so engage those hamstrings and kick up too. The butterfly kick, or dolphin kick, actually starts from your chest, moves down to your core, and then to your hips. Your ankles are like the end of a whip snapping to finish the kick. Don't kick from your knees. Keep your legs together and use your hips like you're a dolphin. To work on your butterfly kick, try the flow drill. Extend your arms in front of your shoulders and kick for the entire length of the pull. Try figuring out the feeling of the kick flowing from one point in your body to the next, but make sure you have a good body position in the water. Maintain the hips high. You can add fins or a snorkel if you want. Are you taking notes? I hope so. Now let's put it all together and add in breathing. For so many swimmers, breathing can be a real struggle. You can't figure out when to breathe, how to breathe, inhale, exhale. You sink every time you lift up your head. Now, if that sounds like you, listen up. To take a breath, lift your head up right after your catch. As your arms come forward, drop your head back down. Try not to lift your head too high when you breathe. Your chin should be just grazing the surface of the water. Lift just enough to grab a quick breath, then get your head back into that neutral position. Remember, your hips will follow your head position, so when your head goes up, your hips will sink, and we don't want to have those heavy hips. I recommend picking a breathing pattern and sticking with it to make sure your body gets a steady flow of air and doesn't fatigue extra quickly. Try breathing every two or three strokes and see what works for you. When you stay consistent with your breathing pattern, you'll get less tired because you're giving your body a steady supply of oxygen and your body knows what's coming. Now, we can't talk about swimming faster without talking about streamline. Streamline is potentially the most important word in swimming. It's the foundation for every single stroke. Streamline is also the fastest body position in the water because when you do it right, you have the least amount of drag. I mean, think about it. You're like a torpedo moving through the water. You're compact. You have no resistance. Now, when you push off the wall, add in a few dolphin kicks, and your push-off's gonna go even further. You don't want to overdo your dolphin kick. Instead, keep it short and fast. Before we move on, you should know. Butterfly requires a baseline of strength that most beginners don't have. So if you're struggling with fly, just keep at it. Over time, you'll build strength and it'll get a little easier. For more butterfly tips, check out our video on five common butterfly mistakes and how to fix them. Now that we've taken care of all of this technique discussion, let's take a look at how Michael Phelps applies everything that we talked about in his butterfly. The first thing I want to focus on with Michael Phelps' stroke is just how smooth the recovery is. He keeps his chin just at the surface level of the water. There is the surface of the water. Actually, there's his chin. And there is the surface level of the water. You want to keep your head, at least, as low to the surface as possible because if you lift your head too high out of the water, then your hips are gonna sink on the back end, and that's gonna mean you're dragging your legs kind of like an anchor. Now, a lot of butterflies actually have a different size amplitude. When I'm talking about amplitude, I'm talking about the total, the distance in how far you're kicking, both up and down. So Michael actually has a relatively bigger amplitude than a lot of other swimmers do. Doesn't mean anyone is wrong or right. Everyone has different body positions, strength, flexibility, and that all factors in. But if you notice, Michael is kicking in both the down direction as well as the up direction. And the faster you can kick in the up direction, then the faster you can return to the down kick, which is actually more powerful. The pull, we're gonna start with the pull. When you look at the pull, it's almost like two freestyle strokes happening at the same time. We're gonna put it right here. What does that look like? It looks like a freestyle stroke. You got that high elbow catch. There's the other arm. But really, what we have here is two early vertical forearm. And that really means you're positioning your hands from your fingertips to your elbow to pull the water behind you because that is how you pull yourself forward. If you notice, his body line's pretty high in the water. His body's actually pretty flat at this point. So oftentimes swimmers, they have this huge up and down swivel. He isn't really displacing the water in that wave motion. So he's pretty flat on the upper body. I'm gonna pause it right there. His eyes are looking down. And at this point, if you start to notice, that is his body position. So what happened to his legs? His legs are sinking a little bit. His butt is no longer at the surface of the water. I'll draw the surface of the water. That is the surface of the water. And there's a gap between his butt, which means he's displacing more water. Now that's actually not that bad of a thing because look what happens next. His eyes and his chest are gonna press down. Boom. And now look what happened to his hips. Remember that water line? That was the water line. And look at his butt. His butt's riding high in the water. You'd be able to see his butt because his hips are pressing up and his chest is pressing down. Let's go ahead and keep watching and see how the stroke unveils. So finishing with the hands, pushing all the way through, press the chest. And there you can see the easy arm recovery. And you want your arms to enter the water at shoulder width in front of you. His head was right there and his hands are entering right at 11 and one, the arms of a clock. Let's go ahead and put this in slow motion. Make it a little easier to see. There you go. We talked about the head position being really flat right there. Here is a great drill. It's called two strokes on your right, two on your left, two together. And what you're trying to do is work on that rhythm. We talked about that undulation motion. If you notice his elbow is bent, that's not how you swim the stroke, but in this drill, and his coach even talks about it, you're really focusing on pressing that chest down, getting the hips up. And here we go. This is the ultimate throwback, 1996. This is the 50 meter butterfly. There's Michael Phelps. He has a lot of the body rhythm technique that he carried on for the next 20 years of his career. However, his timing and breathing is completely terrible. If you watch on the way back, the timing of his breath is like at the absolute worst time. And here we go, right? Watch, he breathes. And the reason why I show this is because even the best swimmer in the world was not always perfect. And of course, Phelps was not perfect. He was continuously focusing on improving. Now for some advice. Chances are there's going to be one stroke that you struggle with. And I know it's not fun working on things you aren't good at, but trust me, getting out of your comfort zone is actually a good thing and will make you a better swimmer. To get there, that's what the MySwimPro app is all about. If you're ready to start training, head over to the link in the description and download the MySwimPro app. I didn't talk about turns at all in this video, but don't worry. Check out our video on breaststroke and butterfly turns to learn how to do an open turn. Now, if all this stuff seems like a lot, it's because it is, but you don't have to make it that complicated. Instead, work on technique, improve little by little, and you'll see amazing results. Check out the drill down video series on this channel for all the tips, tricks, and drills you need to improve your technique in all four strokes. Thanks for watching.