The Best and Worst BUTTERFLY Drills

These are the best drills to swim faster in butterfly and improve your technique. In this video, I'm going to rank 15 of the most common butterfly drills on a tier list from S being superior to F being absolute failure. Now in order to be S, you have to be a drill that is going to improve your technique. It's easy to do and it doesn't require a lot of equipment. And above all things, it has to immediately improve your feel of the water. So that way you can swim faster with more efficiency. Now let's get right into it. The first drill I'm going to talk about is swimming butterfly with paddles. Yes, it's going to make you feel powerful. You're going to feel like a boss. You're going to intimidate everyone, including the grandma in the lane next to you. But is it the best way to improve your swimming? I don't think so because this drill is much more advanced. Adding any type of resistance is more difficult to start with, let alone paddles on the pole in butterfly. This is a drill that really can increase your risk of injury. And as a result, it shouldn't be done very frequently, if at all, unless you're a more advanced swimmer. So swimming with equipment is great, but adding paddles for butterfly is going to land us on the C-tier list. On the flip side, swimming with fins can be a great way to improve your technique and increase the duration of which you can swim the butterfly stroke. Butterfly is one of the most difficult strokes to master, but if you swim with fins, it can make it that much easier. The only thing is you don't want to be overly dependent on fins. So that way you can't really swim this stroke at all unless you have the fins. Now, butterfly with fins would be on the S-tier list. The problem is it does require a piece of equipment. And for that reason, swimming butterfly with fins is going to land you on the A-tier list. Now, one of my favorite drills to work on the timing and the rhythm of the stroke is called 3-3-3. This is where you take three strokes on your right arm, three strokes on your left arm, and then three strokes all together. A variation of this is 2-2-2, and there are other number variations. But 3 strokes, 3 strokes, 3 strokes is one of the best ways to really balance your stroke and make sure you have a nice body undulation. Then you get to put it all together and use both arms for three full strokes. You can factor in the breathing, you can breathe on your side when you do the one-arm strokes, and then you can breathe regularly forward-facing when you do the full three strokes with both your arms. And because this drill is something you can incorporate into all different levels of training, no matter what your skill level is, and it doesn't necessarily need additional equipment, the 3-3-3 drill is going to land us as an S-tier drill. One of the best ways to swim faster is to train under resistance. Now, assuming you have the mechanics down solid, by adding resistance like a parachute or a power tower, you can increase the amount of power production you have and increase your strength in the water. This additional resistance is going to create muscle recruitment, so that way when you take off the resistance, you're going to feel that much faster and you're going to have the easiest speed, which in a stroke like butterfly and breaststroke is extremely important. Now, because this is a drill that requires a piece of equipment, it's not really accessible to everyone, but it is something you can incorporate pretty regularly into your training, even for short little bursts. Swimming butterfly with resistance is going to land us on the A-tier list. One thing that's nearly impossible is swimming butterfly with perfect technique slowly. Butterfly is one of the strokes like breaststroke where you have to train at a high level of intensity because if you don't, your body is going to sink and your time is going to be off. So there's no such thing as slow butterfly and you don't want to train your body or your mind to incorporate that into your regular routine. So for that reason, swimming butterfly slow is going to land us on the F-tier list. On the flip side, if you want to feel fast, you can train butterfly with assisted speed. This is where you're actually being pulled in by a bungee or another training device. Now, when you do this, it's going to allow your body position to ride that much higher in the water and as a result, you're going to train what it's like to feel fast. It's also going to improve your timing and other mechanics. Now, if you train this too often or your body's not ready to handle this additional speed, then it's actually going to throw off your timing and as a result, training with assisted speed butterfly is going to land us on the B-tier list. Butterfly can be one of the most challenging strokes to master just because of the body rhythm that it requires. There's also the timing of the stroke with the arms and the kick, but one way that you can learn this is actually training just the undulation, just the dolphin kicking motion. And a drill that you can do this with is head first dolphin kick. So you swim dolphin kick just with your arms at your side, leading with your head. You're essentially bobbing through the water with your head leading the way and it's a lot easier with fins. So if you throw fins on, you're going to feel a lot more natural training this dolphin kick motion, leading with your head, with your arms at your side. You simply lift your head up for a breath and then you go back down. Your head is leading the way on the surface of the water. Now, this is a little bit more difficult to do without fins. So as a result, it's not going to get us an S tier, but it is something that is developmental in the butterfly stroke. And this variation is going to land us as an A tier. One of the best drills to focus on the timing and rhythm of the stroke is three kicks with one pull. Now, the way this works is you're in the flow state on the surface of the water. You dolphin kick three times and then you time it. So that way you do a nice, big, aggressive arm pull back to the recovery and then three more kicks. So it's one pull, three kicks. Traditionally, in the butterfly stroke, you'll have two kicks for every arm pull. Now, in this drill, you can even add additional dolphin kicks just to get the rhythm reset on the surface before starting the next pull. Now, this is easier done with fins, but in the grand scheme of things, this drill is actually really good for developing your technique, feel of the water, and what it feels like to balance in that undulation state on the surface of the water. Now, this drill three kick with one pull is going to land us on the B tier because there are other variations of this drill in butterfly that are easier to incorporate and teach the same thing. Swimming fast butterfly means you have to have good core strength and one of the best drills to do that is practicing the dolphin kick on your back in streamline. This slob drill, streamline on back, is fantastic for all of the strokes, but especially butterfly because if you can focus on keeping your hands rested in the surface of the water, you're on your back, your eyes are looking up at the sky or ceiling, and you're using your core and you're popping your hips out of the water, working that undulation, dolphin kick on your back is one of the best ways to build core strength and also the muscles that are engaged all the way stem from your core down through your hip flexors, your quads, and into your toes. Focus on having a nice range of motion. You're not really bending your knees. You want to feel like a dolphin. And for that reason, because this drill can be done with or without fins in streamline on your back, this is going to land us as an S tier drill. Traditionally in butterfly, you breathe facing forward. You lift your head up. Your chin is right on the surface of the water, but there's another version of this. And this drill means breathing on your side. So side breathing butterfly used to be a little bit more common in competitions, but now you can be done as a drill where you really focus on not lifting your head very high out of the water. Because if you lift your head out of the water when you're breathing facing forward, you're actually going to create a lot of resistance because your legs are going to sink like a rock. So to combat this, one drill is to breathe on your side. That way it keeps your hips high in the water because you never raise your chest Now because this drill isn't really necessary to focus on this and there are other drills like 333 where you can essentially apply the same concept. I would put this drill on the C tier list. Have you ever seen someone struggling to swim butterfly at the end of a race? Maybe they're in a workout and they're just barely getting to the wall. They're lifting their head up and they're just drowning. This, believe it or not, is an actual drill. It's called head up butterfly. It's where you swim butterfly with your head above the surface the entire time. Now because we don't want to train like this, I really see no purpose in this drill. So if you focus on keeping your head above the water, this is the opposite of what we're trying to do in butterfly. We want our head low, we want our hips coming up and we want to feel like we're moving on top of the water with the least amount of resistance. So if you don't want to feel like you're struggling and the piano is on your back at the end of a workout or the end of a race, then don't do this drill. Heads up butterfly is clearly an F tier drill. Did you know that in the original butterfly stroke, you would do a breaststroke kick? They evolved from each other, believe it or not. And in master swimming, if you're above a certain age, you can actually swim a butterfly pull with a breaststroke kick. And this is actually a drill. Now, depending on your specificity, whether you're training for breaststroke or butterfly, this could be an amazing drill or a terrible drill. If you're a hardcore butterfly swimmer, you don't want to do this drill. Butterfly pull, keep the butterfly kick. But if you're a breaststroke swimmer, you might actually benefit from doing the butterfly pull with a breaststroke kick. Just make sure you finish the kick. Because this is a mixed drill that applies differently to different groups of people, I'm going to give it a C tier. On the flip side, incorporating a butterfly pull with a flutter kick can really teach you the power mechanics of what butterfly can do. If you want to have a powerful butterfly stroke, do short bursts where you swim butterfly arms with a flutter kick. If you have fins, it makes it even that much more powerful. Now, what this is going to do, it's actually going to flatten the stroke, but it's going to give you more power production because you can really concentrate on having a powerful pull phase under the water with a nice controlled recovery over the water. So for that reason, the butterfly pull with a flutter kick is going to land us on the B tier. Once upon a time, I joined a workout where the warmup was a 400 IM pull with a buoy. That's right. Now, this will build a lot of mental toughness, but swimming butterfly with a pull buoy is not going to teach you the proper body mechanics. Remember, you want to have an undulation in your stroke. And doing it for warmup is actually one of the worst things that you can do. But that's a story for another day. So if we're going to take the drill, butterfly pull with a pull buoy, we're going to land this on the D tier because this is a drill that requires equipment and it's just going to make you slower. Just because it makes you feel tough doesn't mean it's the best drill to improve your mechanics and swim faster. Finally, I saved the best drill for last. And this is the flow drill on your stomach, on the surface. You can do this drill with equipment, without equipment. If you want to throw in a snorkel, go for it. Keep your eyes down and really focus on keeping your fingertips a few centimeters under the surface of the water and use your entire body to work the undulation. If you want to add fins, that's fine, but don't overdo it. You want to feel like you're kicking in the up direction and the down direction. Because this drill is total body, it's really going to teach you how to have the right body undulation and it's going to help your underwater dolphin kick and your core stability. It's going to land us not only on the S tier, but the S tier plus because it's a drill that everyone should be doing at every level for any type of stroke mechanics. Now, if you guys are watching this far into the video, it means you're serious about improving your technique and swimming faster and smarter than ever before. So if you're interested in working with myself and my team on a more one-to-one basis, having us analyze your technique, hold you accountable, and build personalized training programs just for you, make sure you check out the link in the description so you can apply to work with us. Now, if you enjoyed this video, I know you're going to love this one right over here. I'll see you over there and happy swimming.