Breathing mistakes in butterfly

The butterfly stroke has five elements: armstroke (entry and stretch, outsweep, insweep, upsweep, and recovery), kicking, body position, breathing, and when you put them altogether, timing is crucial. Swimmers tend to do mistakes in each one of these elements and through this blog I try to help them identify these mistakes and correct them. I have already blogged about the mistakes that swimmers do during the recovery (here), when they kick (here), and timing mistakes (here). Today I will go through the most common mistakes during breathing when swimming butterfly.

Some swimmers keep the head and trunk too low in the water when they breathe, while others bring them too high out of the water. Other common mistakes are to breathe too early or too late during the stroke cycle.

Swimmers who stay too low in the water when they breathe will invariably drag the arms through the water during the last half of the recovery. It should be prevented by elevating the head and shoulders enough that they remain clear of the water until just before the hands enter the water. At the same time, swimmers do not need to raise the head and trunk any higher than necessary to keep the arms from dragging through the water.

Swimmers who breathe too early generally use a glide stroke. They glide after the arms enter the water so that they can take a breath before they start the outsweep. These swimmers must be taught to keep the arms moving forward and out after they enter and to keep the face in the water until mid-stroke.

When swimmers breathe too late, they develop a hitch in their strokes. That is, they hesitate to breathe before bringing the arms out of the water. There may be three reasons behind this. The first is because they keep the head down too long after the entry and do not get the face above water until late in the armstroke. The second cause for breathing late may be because some swimmers push up too much with the arms during the upsweep. The large amount of downward force created requires them to kick very deep. As a result, the hips rise excessively above the surface and they have to delay inhalation and the start of the arm recovery until the hips return below the surface. The third, and perhaps most common, cause for a hitch among butterfly swimmers is that some turn the palms down before the hands leave the water. This change of hand position from up to down interrupts the arms’ movement out of the water and it delays inhalation and the start of the arm recovery.

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