How To Swim BREASTSTROKE Like The BEST In The World

Breaststroke might look easy, but it's actually one of the toughest strokes to master. Its unique technique and timing make it a tricky puzzle to put together, but once you get it right, it can feel smooth and natural. So let's see what the best breaststrokers in the world are doing and how that can help you improve your own stroke. Let's dive in. Now, breaststroke, look at a few things he's doing absolutely fantastic. Number one, streamline. Look at this streamline. It is incredible. Every stroke starts and stops with streamline. It's incredible how good he is at returning to the streamline position. Eyes are looking down. Legs are narrow. Toes are pointed. Fingertips are a little bit loose, but he's basically there. Watch this. Look at the streamline. Start and finish. Pull, kick, glide. And you can actually see when his hands return, his hands are actually overlapping and touching each other on their way back to streamline. This is something that even the best swimmers in the world aren't good at doing. He is fantastic at doing this specific skill. You can see his hands, they literally come back together. And also from this angle, we can really see, look at the width of his kick. Do you see how wide his knees are? His knees never go wider than the widest point of his body, which is his shoulders. And we'll see it right here's the pull out. Let me get out of the way. Wow. Do you see that here? Watch it again. Slow motion. We're going to play in slow motion. There's a streamline dolphin kick. Good pull. Look how in line his body is. I mean, talk about streamline. He's a little bit loosey goosey on the hand position. You can see his hands could probably be pressed against his body a little bit more, a little bit added resistance there. He could probably go. This is the second 50 breaststroke in a 400 IM. So he's probably really tired. However, look at the quality of the distance he has. And one thing I noticed, he pulls his hands up. Then he kicks. He lifts his head up a little bit early. Look at his head. And now he lifts his head up. He's floating a lot of resistance right there. He could keep his head down just a little bit longer, but it's immaculate. Look at this efficiency. Both of these guys, incredible breaststrokers, but Leon Marchand on the breaststroke. Wow. Right there. Okay. You can see his fingers are actually open a little bit. Now, the amount that his fingers are open is it needs to be a little bit more controlled. Now, when you're swimming, you get the most power when your hand is comfortable. If you look at my hand right now, this is where you get the most power. If your hands are open any wider than that, you're going to have water slip through. If your hands are completely cupped like this, you're decreasing the surface area. I've actually seen Katinkahosu swim in real life in person. It's absolutely amazing. And there's the breaststroke. So I'm gonna go ahead and just pause at this point right here. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, wow, she's coming really high out of the water. And that may be true if you look at the angle. However, her hips are very high in the water. They're just under the surface of the water. And what happens is if you're not swimming at this level, you'll come really high out of the water and your legs are going to sink. As a result, you're going to have a really like that's going to be your angle, that green line. And you're going to create a lot of resistance, a lot of resistance. And we don't want that. So you want to have a really level body position. Her eyes are looking forward. But as soon as she extends her hands, she's going to explode. So go ahead and just watch this. I'm going to put this in normal speed and watch how she just is exploding forward. Boom. Hit the streamline every single stroke, trying to get to that neutral body position. Explode, explode, explode. And that's the key to a good breaststroke. There it is underwater. Beautiful. When we take a look at Adam Petey's breaststroke, it's simply a work of art. His strokes are very clean, especially when you look at them at a slower pace like this. The first that I want to highlight is timing. So when we look at Adam Petey's stroke, he does exactly that. This is in real speed right now. And as you can see, he starts and finishes every single stroke in streamline, even if it's just for a little bit. And you can see he's doing that very clearly here. The shorter the distance of the race, the less you're going to hold that streamline. But it's really, really important to hold it. And the second thing I want you guys to pay attention to is the pull. When we're talking about corners, we're talking about the way he's grabbing the water, pushing out with the pinkies, pushing out just past the shoulders. And if we draw some lines of just how wide we're going, you're not really going that far out. Maybe 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock if you use the arms of a clock. And the goal here is to try and initiate that high elbow catch as early as possible. So that way you're catching water from your fingertips all the way through into your armpit, actually. And if you watch in slow motion, you can see how he's engaged with the water all the way through at every point of the pull. And a big mistake swimmers make is when they're taking the pull right here and the arms are about to return back to streamline, you kind of drop the elbows. And if you take a look at his stroke, he is really leveraging and pulling the water behind him at every single moment. And once the hands come back together and the thumbs are at the nose, he has an insane drive forward and just explodes. And if you take a look at the kick, you can see how far apart the knees are. The knees don't really go that far apart. And if you open up your legs too much, you're going to create way too much resistance. And that's no good. You actually minimize the size of your kick and make sure that your heels actually come up all the way to your butt into, you know, your heels driving your butt, use your hamstrings, get a really strong kick. There it is. Wow. His body is so high in the water. I'm going to pause it just so you can get an appreciation. When he gets to streamline, you can see his entire backside on top of the water, which means his legs. Now, if you do this right, his legs and his whole body is just very high in the water. If we could see this underwater, you know, his legs would be very close to the surface. His upper body is pretty much just hovering on top of the water and he's able to return that head position. He's looking down. He's not looking forward. If he was looking forward, his legs would be way deep underneath the water. And that's not what he's doing. Let's keep watching the race. Look at that start and finish and streamline, streamline, streamline, streamline. And one way to know that your timing is good is how many strokes you take in the pool. So I'm gonna go ahead and pause it. This is really important. If you guys take nothing away from this video, is that if you want to swim breaststroke fast, it's having a good streamline. So the most important thing is streamline. Watch how he hits it on every stroke. Boom. If you notice, it's like you're taking a snapshot. It should look the same at the end of every stroke. And he's so good. If you think about the waterline, right? The waterline is right here underneath the lane line. His body is just hovering right underneath it. I mean, he has such a good body line. This is why he's one of the best breaststrokers in the world. Like I'm a pretty decent breaststroker, but my body line, I'll draw another red line. My body line's like right here. So let's focus on just the pool and see his hand speed. Look at that hand speed. He's keeping his hands out in front. He's not rushing the stroke, keeping things connected. Here, watch his kick in slow motion. I'm going to pause it at the widest point of his kick right here. Now, if you notice, when you kick breaststroke, you want to make sure your knees stay relatively close together because if your knees go too wide, you're going to create a lot of resistance, right? You have, imagine like he's in a wind tunnel and all this resistance is coming into his legs, into his body. If the wider the legs go, especially this part right here between the hips and the knees, if that part breaks the line of your body, it's going to slow you down. Now, the best breaststroke swimmers, it looks like his kick is really wide, but it's not. And I'll show you why from the other angle from above. Take a look at this. I'm going to clear the drawing. I'm going to have you watch it yourself. Watch the flexibility right there. This is the secret to Michael Andrews' fast swimming. It's right here, right here as well. It's the hip flexibility because from this angle, it looks like his feet are actually pretty wide. But in reality, it's that he's able to have such flexible hips that he's able to get his ankles rotated and that takes hip flexibility. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to and you have to open your legs wide to get your feet that far out. So we're going to play this from a different angle and it's going to really show that. So now watch it on that first stroke, not this. This is the pullout kick. You can kind of see it right there. Wait for it, wait for it, right there. It looks like he's literally kicking air, but he's not. It's because his feet are so close to the surface. Look at that. I mean, it literally looks like his feet are just an inch under the surface of the water. The only way that's possible to bend your knee like that is because he has great hip flexibility. So let's go ahead and watch that right there. Pay attention when we look underwater again, how high his body position. That's why he's swimming so fast because his body is so high in the water. The amount of flexibility required. I mean, look at it. It literally looks like his heel is out of the water. And so his whole body is basically hovering, levitating almost over the water. This is a lot different than how most people swim breaststroke at that level. If you were to compare him and Adam Peaty, Adam Peaty is very high in the water. He's not this high in the water. It looks like he kicks air. Every stroke looks like he's kicking air, but he looks so smooth, so powerful. And he is always watching his strokes, critiquing. And this is super valuable to see your own self swim. If you want our team of coaches to analyze your stroke, we do this every single week in our swimming academy. So go to the link in the description and join us if you want to take your swimming to the next level.