Pull In The Reins

If you feel that you are spending a lot of energy to pull in your arms, you probably are doing too much. Are you stretching your arms out far and wide? In swimming, we like to keep things tight. This means you should aim to keep your body in one long streamline so as to minimise drag. So, arms in and keep them close to your body. 

The breaststroke is not a stroke that is meant to be heavily dependent on the upper body. Most of your propulsion should come from your legs and hips.

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Kick It Around

This brings us to our next tip in which you should work on your kicking technique, and it does go in a circular motion. Kick your feet to your butt, externally rotate your feet and push them out before bringing them back together. This is not as easy as it sounds as it may require you to improve some hip flexibility, work on your coordination and spend some time to make it a muscle memory. 

We recommend doing stretching exercises to improve that external rotation such as the butterfly and pigeon stretch. You can also do lateral strengthening exercises with a resistance band. The flexibility of the hips has often been used as a way of determining if the swimmer can perform for backstroke competitions by coaches. Do work on it out of the water and whenever you are free!

For more power to your kicks, ensure your legs are always behind you and that your knees are not spread wider than your shoulders. As much as possible, keep the kicks underwater.

Give Yourself Some Breathing Space

As with any other technique and stroke in swimming, the trick to enjoy your swim and your body movements is to know how to control your breathing and do it right. For this, you will need to learn how to blow bubbles, which is a slow release of air while in the water so that you are ready to take in a breath when your head is lifted out of it. 

Olympic Swimmer Segio Lopez even recommends holding your breath during your glide and letting the air out at the last minute to keep your buoyancy and body line straight. But, only do this if you are fit and ready! We don’t want you to faint and drown in the pool! Always remember to keep safety first.

Time It Right

The legs and arms aren’t actually moving at the same time. Indeed, when your arms are pulling, your legs are resting and vice versa. You can work on this with drills such as breaststroke with flutter or dolphin kick. Alternatively, you can do 2 kicks for every pull. 

National Swim Coach for USA, Jeff Julian, suggests practising sculling and full strokes together to work on timing. To not confuse yourself with the timing of kicks, you can practise this with a float and some flutter kicks.

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This timing certainly also has to go together with your breathing so keep calm and find your personal best rhythm that you can maintain.

Count Your Stokes

Make each of your strokes work for you. With every stroke you take, you go the maximum distance with the least effort. Keep your recovery time between each arm pull as little as possible but also in time with your kicks. Start by monitoring how many strokes you need to swim a lap and keep the number consistent. After which, you can slowly cut down on the number of strokes you need to go distance.

Conclusion

Don’t despair if you find it hard to master the breaststroke. It will come with time and practise. In the meantime, you can also work on other strokes such as the front crawl, which will most definitely help you with perfecting these techniques. Every swimmer is different and even the greats have had to struggle to get to where they are.

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Hi Readers! A peek into my life consists of figure skating, traveling, writing and doing many things to keep up my fitness like yoga and swimming. As a skating coach and former music & movement instructor, I hope to shed some light on how fitness and swimming in particular, can benefit and aid you. Cheers!