Improve your butterfly

Butterfly has a bad reputation among most swimmers as being difficult. They complain about having to race or train fly, and when they are allowed to choose their own races at meets, they avoid it. Swimmers have the choice of using a racing stroke or a survival stroke. Racing stroke is forward and fast; survival stroke is vertical ans slow. Most swimmers (particularly age-groupers) think butterfly is difficult because they swim survival stroke in practice all the time ans in races as soon as they get tired. Survival stroke is indeed difficult, exhausting, inefficient, and ugly. 

Here are some key points that swimmers and their coaches should focus on in order to improve their butterfly technique.

1. Soft entry, buns up. The entry of the hands should be light, quick, and soft so that the momentum flows forward. The hands are set in at shoulder width and near the surface as they initiate pressure against the water. The hips should be high and the body position almost level as the hands enter. There is no dead time at the front end of the stroke, and the body is positioned to pull well.
2. Wrist, rotate, and resistance. The faster swimmers can be doing something that produces momentum, the better. Just as in freestyle, swimmers want to reposition their hands, forearms, and upper arms so that immediately after the entry of the hands, the fingers point down and the elbow is high. This is the high elbow position, and it produces a pulling orientation that is biomechanically sound and powerful. The swimmer presses in the right directions so that he moves forward fast. In freestyle and backstroke, the body roll helps reposition the arms; in butterfly, a short, outward sweep or scull combined with the pitch of the body does the task. 
3. Round the bend, into the middle, and out the back. We are aiming for a long, powerful pull that sweeps slightly out then powerfully in and backward, with good traction on the water the entire way and a gradual acceleration of the hands from start to finish. First, swimmers reach forward and scull outward to reposition the hands and forearms and grab hold of the water as the legs are kicking down. Next, they sweep the hands diagonally in and back until the thumbs touch or nearly touch under the chest. Then they push straight backward as the second kick snaps downward for maximum forward momentum. Good pressure on hands and forearms throughout the entire pull is crucial. 
4. Stay low, drive forward. We want a fly where every stroke is the same, at the same level, and moves the body the same distance forward, whether the swimmer is breathing or not. Swimmers should feel that they are driving the body forward, not up. On the nonbreathing strokes, the should drive the crown of the head directly forward; on the breathing strokes, they should drive the eyebrows forward (not the chin).
5. Breathe early with your eyebrows. This stroke cue is the corollary to the previous one about staying low and driving forward. Instead of lifting the body or reaching the chin forward to breathe, swimmers should reach forward with their eyebrows and stay low. This process begins early in the pull, and the swimmer actually breathes as the pull is exploding backward and the arms begin the recovery. The goal is to have the head and body at the same level on every stroke and to have the body driving forward on every stroke.
6. Double explosion out the back. The goal here is to have a double explosion consisting of a powerful push backward with the hands simultaneously with a powerful kick downward with the feet. This combination should launch swimmers' bodies forward so that they feel like they are being shot out of a cannon. If they don't feel this propulsion, the timing is not right.
7. Recover with a fling, not a lift. Swimmers should press from the finish of the pull into a flinging recovery. They should not slow the hands down and then lift the arms for the recovery. The recovery should be ballistic and effortless, controlled but relaxed. If it feels hard, swimmers are doing it wrong. The arms should be kept nearly straight and the body alignment flat. 
8. Work all four beats of the kick. Each stroke cycle has two kicks. Each kick consists of a downbeat and an upbeat, so there are four beats to a stroke cycle. Kicking up is just as important as kicking down. Though most of the power is created by the quick downbeat, if the swimmer does not then immediately recover or press up, the legs and feet are not in position for the next powerful downbeat, which causes the arms and legs to be out of phase.

Note: I'm sorry I don't post any videos whith drills in the water, but for the past four months we don't have a swimming pool (it doesn't have water :( ) in the place I live. I promise that when it's open again I'll post a few drills to improve your technique.

Image source [1]