PERFECT BUTTERFLY! | Sarah Sjöström Stroke Analysis

What's going on, swim fans? In today's video, I'm breaking down Sarah Højström's world-class butterfly technique. You might know her as Sarah Sjøstrøm. She's the world-class butterflier from Sweden. She's incredible. In this video, we're going to break down all the fundamentals of her butterfly stroke technique. I've got the iPad right here with me, and I'm going to walk you guys through the analysis step-by-step, both looking at her stroke above the water as well as below the water. The goal for this video is to share a little bit about how she's training and how she's swimming so fast. That's what we do here at MySwimPro. We help swimmers improve their performance and health both in and out of the water. If you guys aren't already subscribed, make sure you subscribe to the channel, like this video, and let me know in the comments if you like this format and what other athletes you'd like to see me analyze. Without further ado, let's begin. The first thing I want to analyze is her underwater undulation, her dolphin kick. This is what you do in both freestyle as well as butterfly when you push off the wall and when you dive in. It's also the foundation of the butterfly stroke, so I figure it's most appropriate to start here. When we look at her dolphin kick, the one thing I want you guys to really pay attention to is the displacement her body has in the water. If you notice, her dolphin kick is actually not that big. She's really minimizing resistance rather than going for increasing propulsion. It's really important to note that in butterfly, everyone, and all the strokes actually, everyone is built a little bit differently. The amplitude of the dolphin kick is going to be different. If you notice, she doesn't bend her knees a lot. Her body is following a relatively straight line. The dolphin kick is originating from the hips. If you see some other world-class butterflies, I would do a Caleb Dressel analysis or even Michael Phelps, there is actually a little bit more undulation starting with the chest, even starting with the hands. She does not do that. She actually generates most of the power, I would say, from the middle of the diaphragm all the way back. Like I said, every swimmer is a little bit different, but it's important to note that she's not bending her knees very much. I've seen a lot of swimmers, they bend their knees like crazy, and that's not what she's doing. Really, really good underwater kick, dolphin kick, obviously. Let's see how that translates into the stroke. There it is one more time. You can see the amplitude, the distance of that kick. As you can see from this front-facing view, it's actually really interesting to note how she doesn't really displace that much water. You can actually fit her whole body through this box. The box didn't really show up the way I wanted it to. We're going to clear that. I'll make a bigger box so you can note that. Her frame is not really occupying that much space. It's relatively narrow, and that's the goal. You want to be like a torpedo underneath the water and really just go for that max distance per kick, but keeping it compact at the same time. Now, if we move on top of the water, if we take a look at her stroke, the first thing I want to pay attention to is her hand entry. When we look at the hand entry, it needs to enter the water at 11 and 1. That means basically your hands are floating on top of the water, hitting the water at 11 and 1 of the clock. If we had a clock, and these are the arms of the clock, this is where they are entering the water. Oftentimes, swimmers either do too narrow or too wide of an entry. I'm going to go ahead and change the color to green. Oftentimes, swimmers are either going to enter too wide, especially if they're trying to go fast and they're picking up their tempo, or actually more often, a lot of swimmers actually go too narrow, and basically the hands are touching. I believe at every speed, Sarah does an incredible job positioning her hands right in front of her shoulders, maximizing distance per stroke. Their hands are never touching each other. They're never crossing the middle line, and that's super important for swimming fast butterfly. Again, this is in a race, and you can actually see it from above. I'm just going to fast forward to where you can see it. It's a little blurry, but you can basically see her hands, and she has a line, a channel, I guess you would say. Her arms are always going to be entering in that position. Let's see how it works. Play. You can see the arms are entering at 11 and 1 o'clock, super important, especially for butterfly. We're going to go ahead and see another position of how this shapes. This is when she broke the world record in the 50-meter butterfly. She went 24-4 long course. I believe this was in 2014. It still is the world record at the time of recording this video, which is absolutely amazing. Now, one thing we're going to transition when we talk about her stroke is how she's able to always move forward. Here it is in slow motion. Hands are entering at 11 and 1. She's not really going up and down that much, and I think this is what benefits her a lot in these shorter distance, the 50 and the 100 butterfly. She's really keeping a relatively flat dolphin body motion, and I think this underwater shot right here shows everything that you need to know. Basically, when she's swimming butterfly, she's not really doing a lot of displacement up and down. Certainly, her body has this sine curve going for it. Her hips are going up and then down, up and then down, and that's great, but the total amplitude, meaning the amount of displacement, it's relatively narrow. It's not very wide. I see often, too often, butterflies are going up and down, up and down, and that's no good. You're trying to move forward. If we focus in on what makes her so fast, it's the power of her pull. Like I mentioned, she enters the water at 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock with her hand entry. Here it is one more time in slow motion. Look at how she's entering the water, 11 and 1, and from that position, her hand pulls immediately back. There's no out-sweep and in-sweep. As soon as the hands get in front at shoulder width, it's an immediate pull back. I'm actually going to go back to this race where you can really see what I'm talking about. If we take it right here, slow motion, arms are in, pull back is immediate. There's no hesitation out in front. I'm actually going to pause it so I can really emphasize this point. There we are. Arms are at 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock, and at this point, the arms are going to start the pull. We're going to start pulling, and then we're going to pull the water behind us. That is really the pathway to pull the most water. It's kind of like two freestyle strokes at the same time. When it comes to generating power, which we'll talk about with some dry land that she does, I have some videos of that. That's what it's all about. It's about generating power, but you can't do that unless you set up your hands in the right spot from the initial catch, which is 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock. There it is in slow motion. You can see the pull pattern underwater. I'm going to pause it on this next stroke so you can see that. You can see the high elbow catch. There it is. That's the high elbow catch, and the water is being just thrust behind. Oftentimes, a lot of swimmers will just have an out sweep. You'll pull your hands out, and then you'll pull them back in, and then you're doing some kind of an S pattern or something like that. Now, having a little bit of an S is fine, but for the most part, you want to be pulling back straight. That is where you generate the most power, and I think this is probably the best example of that. You go 24-4 long course. You go 24-4 in yards in a 50 freestyle as a female. That's really impressive. To be doing that butterfly long course, I mean for a guy even, absolutely insane. Another thing I just want to point out really quick is her head position on the breath, keeping the chin very low to the surface of the water. Let's see if I have another scene like that. Yeah, I do. Let's play it when the breath happens. There it is. We take a look at the water line. Water line is right there. The head is keeping a low profile because if you lift the head too much, the legs sink. We don't want that. We want to keep our head position nice and neutral. As soon as the breath is taken, her head sinks down immediately. Let's watch. There it is. Head goes down because you want the hips to go up. Head down, hips up. Press the chest forward. She's going forward all the time. Now, let's get into the fun stuff. Here we are in the gym working on explosive power. It looks like that's Chad LeClo. These are from her Instagram account. Working on the explosive movement. I love this. Really firing all the total body, actually. Getting that resistance. Chad LeClo getting thrown around. Good stuff. This is a great one. Working on core strength, stability. We have drills like this in the MySwimPro app on the dryland side, so whether you have a physio ball, a Swiss ball like these, it looks like Chad and Sarah are doing there for sure. Pointing the toes, of course. That's really important. Trying to keep your body line. Let's go back to that, actually. The goal of this is to keep your core tight, body posture. You also want to maintain like you're swimming. You want to keep that body line. What's happening is you're really firing on both the hamstrings and the hip flexors. The calves and the shins, but especially the core. That's what this is all about. Let's go ahead and watch this. There it is. That's where the work is happening. Woo! Look at that. All right. Let's see the next drill that we've got here. Pull-ups. I mean, she's a beast. Look at her crank these out. A lot of upper body strength, core stability, doing some kettlebell work, some RDLs, good hamstrings, kettlebell swings, working on total body power. Again, we have a lot of dryland content like this in the MySwimPro app. This is great working on the outside. We mentioned dolphin kick. Let's go back, actually, before. A lot of good melody of workouts here. If you notice what she has, this is called a miniband that's around just above the knees. This is actually putting pressure on the top part, the IT band area. This is great for overall stability, good hip health, which when you're doing all the different strokes, kicking, she does butterfly, freestyle, kick. It's really good to have that total core stability all the way through the diaphragm down in through the knees. It prevents against injury as well. That's a great, great miniband. Doing some pushups, total body, core stability, got to keep everything nice and healthy. Dryland's very important. Here we are, combination movements, doing a squat with the pushup. That's great. We have a ton of those. Now, my favorite, TRX. It looks like she's doing the alphabet. She's doing some Ys, some Ts, some Ws. This really works on the stabilizer muscles in the shoulder and the surrounding regions. Here we go. Here's what we're doing with the ropes. The ropes are killer. She's doing the dolphin motion. Do you guys see that? There she is, trying to do the dolphin motion, core, total body, as if you're doing those straight arm pulldowns. There it is, excellent. Look at her go. This is a great one for the glutes and hamstrings, really working on power. That's how the dolphin kick ... If we look at the technique here, a little bit of feedback I have for her. When you're doing this kind of a movement, you definitely want to try and keep your body flat. You're really focusing on isolating these back muscles. That is the goal. If you notice, she actually lifts her head up a little bit. Her head should stay inside of this box. Let's see what happens in slow motion. When she lifts up ... Shoot, let's go back. There it is. All right, let's play it now. She lifts her head out of the box. You want to keep your body line neutral because that's how you swim. When you do butterfly, of course, you lift your head up to breathe, but you want to keep your head in a neutral position. Let's go ahead and keep watching. I think we've got a couple more scenes here for Sarah Hoistrom. Let's put it in full speed. There we go. As you can see, as a top athlete, you have to be doing dry land, you have to be training in the pool, out of the water as well. There it is. You want to keep that posture tight. This is my final scene I have for you guys. I love it. This is in Italy, I believe. Her goggles came off in the race. Most swimmers would give up, but tough athlete, tough swimmer. Look at that. The goggles are off of her face. I wanted to include this clip just to show that even the best in the world, they have challenges that come. Look at that. She ends up winning the race. Anyway, look at the white cap. There she is. Look at that. With a smile on her face as if nothing happened, congratulate the people in the lane next to you. We all face adversity. It's how we overcome these challenges and how we react to them that defines us as athletes, but also as human beings. I hope you guys enjoyed this video analyzing Sweden's great Sara Højström. She's incredible. Let me know in the comments what you guys think. If you haven't already checked out the My Swim Pro app, we have a ton of drills both in the pool as well as in your dryland training to make sure you're getting stronger and more fit. If you guys haven't already checked out the My Swim Pro Facebook group, it's kind of like the VIP club. It's completely free to join. All you have to do is check out the link in the description below. You can join thousands of swimmers from over 100 countries who are all passionate about swimming faster and smarter than ever before. That being said, wish you guys the best, and I'll see you guys next time.