#TuesdayTip 048: Distance Per Stroke (Breaststroke)

Pretty, pretty good. That was good. Hey, welcome to this week's Tuesday tip. We're continuing our month of distance per stroke. This week we're talking about breaststroke. We're going to talk about two things, increasing power and reducing drag. Each concept, if you get better at one of those two, you're going to get better at going farther with every stroke in breaststroke. When we're talking about increasing power and breaststroke, there's a lot of little things that go into it, but the number one way to move more water and go faster through your legs. Your legs account for most of the power in breaststroke. We need to get the feet outside of the knees, create that angle, and then snap our feet together all the way back at the end of that kick so that we are really pushing water behind us and finishing with those feet together. Out front, we want to make sure that we are getting out with our hands just enough that we can really gain some purchase on the water. Turn the fingertips down, get an early catch with the high elbow. Make sure we're spending at least a little bit of time with the fingertips pointing down and actually pulling our bodies forward into the breath and then into the shoot forward. If we are only going out and then in with that skull, we miss a huge opportunity to actually move our bodies forward into our next kick and into our next stroke. We're losing inches that we could be getting every single stroke just by moving our hips from here up to here before we shoot forward on that next stroke. So I'm going to talk about the drag. We're minimizing resistance in other words. You want to have a really really tight body line. Breaststroke is simultaneously the most explosive stroke but also the most gentle and calm because there are points in breaststroke where your hands get back up top and you're just holding them together. You have a nice long body line and you're trying to cut through the water as your feet finish. Once you finish that kick and you're able to glide and cut through the water, that's minimizing that resistance, that good body line. However, if you're too eager to going into that next stroke before you finish the previous kick, when you're here and you're finishing that kick, this is a whole lot of surface area that you're trying to move through the water. That's not good. Instead, once your hands get up top, leave them up top. Be patient, okay? Finish that kick and ride it out. You always want to get the most out of your kick and all that power that your legs can generate in breaststroke so the main focus for the arms is really getting out of the way for the legs. Just getting them back up top then finishing that kick and cutting through the water. Thank you for watching this week's Tuesday tip. Next week we're going to be talking about butterfly and how to be efficient with that especially in our long course meters where we don't have the luxury of walls. So I hope you stay tuned and have a great rest of your day.