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Breaststroke

Unlike backstroke and freestyle, breaststroke isn't a rotational stroke, it is a iterative stroke. Breaststroke has a power cycle and a glide cycle. This stroke depends greatly upon the timing between the arms and legs in order to porpoise through the water. Breaststroke also has more rules defining its performance than backstroke or freestyle. Every action the swimmer takes must be symmetrical. This means that every action taken by the swimmer must be matched by a mirrored action on the other side of his body. If the kick or arms are uneven at any point, the swimmer is disqualified. Furthermore the swimmers head must break the surface of the water with each stroke. If not, the swimmer is also disqualified.

Test Yourself

Measure your torso. If the distance from your shoulders to your hips is close to the distance from your hips to your feet, breaststroke might be your thing.

Several theories have been postulated regarding this fact that people with longer torsos tend to be better breaststrokers than those us who have longer legs. Some believe that the upper body strength of these people tends to be higher, so their breaststroke benefits from this extra power. Others believe that the closer the swimmer's center of gravity is to the head, the easier time the breaststroker will have of getting over the wall of water during the recovery phase of the stroke.

Whatever the reason, a longer torso seems to give an advantage to some breaststrokers.
At earlier times in the stroke's history, this rule has been more strict, stating that the swimmers head must not go below the water at any time. There's an apocryphal story that has been handed down for many years regarding the reason for this ruling. It goes something like this. Early in the days of competitive swimming, there was no such rule regarding keeping ones head at the waterline during breaststroke and it became a stroke that was done almost completely underwater. In fact those that won the breaststroke events breathed as little as possible. Then one world championship sometime in the 1930s, a Japanese breaststroker completed an entire 200 meter breaststroke underwater. He won the event, but ended up with brain damage due to the oxygen deprivation. Thus the rule was changed.

Now setting aside the obvious racism of the story above, it's terribly unlikely that such a swimmer would end up with brain damage. Backstrokers, for instance, these days regularly perform most of their competitive stroke underwater for the same distances and have yet to end up with any detrimental physical effects. I can see, however, how the fear of such an event as a swimmer's injury could lead to the changing of this rule to something like what we use today.

The arms in breaststroke complete the shortest cycle in competitive swimming. This is the only stroke in which the hands do not finish the power stroke of their cycle by the thigh. The entirety of the arm movement in breaststroke occurs in front of the waistline and some would say even in front of the stomach. To begin the arm motion in breaststroke, lay on your stomach in the water with your head down and your arms over your head. Do not tuck your head against your chest, keep it resting along the water so the waterline rests across the top of your head. Your shoulders will rest against your ears and your hands will be touching at the thumbs in front of your head. As you begin your catch of the water, you will simultaneously raise your head while bringing your hands downwards. Bring your hands perpendicular to the bottom of the pool with the palms facing back towards your feet while keeping your elbows high. Once you feel the balls of water in each of your hands start to create pressure you can begin your pull.

Breaststroke Recovery
Breastroke Recovery

The breaststroke pull as we said before, is a very short and fast action. From the initial catch, you will keep your elbows up and bring your hands out to the width of your shoulders while pulling down. Once your hands have reached a point in space under your pectorals, you will start to reverse the outward motion of your pull and bring your hands back into the centerline under your body. As you bring your hands together, you will bring your elbows down under your body and together. This final squeeze of the water underneath your chest brings your pull into the recovery phase. To recover your arms from a breaststroke pull you must be as streamlined as possible. To streamline your recovery, bring your hands and elbows together at your centerline under your body.

As you complete your breath and bring your face back into the water, bring your hands forward until you've reached your catch position.

You may have felt while we perform breaststroke arms without the kick that you have moved backwards while in the recovery phase of your pull. While that might not actually be the case, your forward motion has definitely slowed. Breaststroke is a stroke that, since it is so low in the water tends to push a lot of water around. As such, to perform the stroke at competition speeds, one much find a way to break through or jump over the wall of water you've been building in front of you in the early phases of the stroke. A good and timely kick is the key to doing so.

To practice your breaststroke kick, lay in the water as I described earlier for the pull. Lay prone with your face in the water, the waterline across the top of your head and your hands together over your head with arms at full extension and your thumbs touching. This time your hands will simply stay in place while we focus on the legs. Bring your head up slowly as you bring your feet up towards your bottom by bending your knees together and down towards the bottom of the pool. Take a quick breath as you set your feet into the breaststroke power position. This position may feel a bit odd if you've not done it before so you may want someone to watch for you. From the prone squatting position with your knees down towards the bottom of the pool and your legs and feet together, you will turn both of your feet out so that the toes point out and your heels stay close together. Your knees will want to spread as well but try to avoid this. In one quick motion you will want to bring your feet outside of the line of your shoulders and snap them together at full extension while straightening your legs. As your feet snap together, your breath ends and you'll put your face back into the water. All this is done while making sure your knees are no more than 6 inches apart. A proper breaststroke kick should feel like you have some pressure against the soles of your feet. If not, you are likely pushing with the tops of your feet too much and not keeping your toes out.

Now that we have the pull and the kick down, we'll put the whole stroke together. In order to get over the wall of water that breaststroke generates we'll have to coordinate the pull and kick of the stroke precisely with a streamlined glide. Both parts of the stroke time themselves off of the breath. The beginning of your breath coincides with the catch of the arm stroke. Once the catch is completed and you're starting your pull, the legs move into snap position. At the end of the pull, the kick snap goes off and the head as it completes the breath leads the body down forward through the wall of water created during the earlier parts of the stroke. One trick that top level competitive swimmers do, is a half butterfly kick at the end of the breaststroke kick. This helps reset the body position of the swimmer in a way to best be able to attack the next wall of water. Be careful not to do a complete butterfly kick though, since officials know about this trick and will disqualify anyone who adds an obvious butterfly kick between strokes.

Breaststroke for me feels like I'm rolling over great logs of water. If my timing is off on any part of the stroke, I hit a log wrong, and end up rolling down the back side of it.

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