Breaststroke

Breast stroke is the odd stroke out. It's the weird cousin that went off to be a ventriloquist. It's a Skittle in a bag of M@Ms.

The reason I say this, is because breaststroke is a horizontal stroke while all the others are vertical. The propulsion in breaststroke is created by moving your arms and legs side to side instead of forward and backward. The arms in the breaststroke start together in front of you. The elbows pull down until they're even with your shoulders the hands pull under you until they reach your chest and should be outside of your torso. Your head will pop out of the water to breath. From there, the hands come together and forward to the starting position.

The legs start straight. The feet then bend right to your butt. They finish by exploding out and back together. The knees are never far apart.

When finishing or doing a turn you need to touch the wall with both hands at the same time. During a turn, after you push off the wall, an underwater pull is done. It's the only stroke where you can do one, and you can only do one stroke underwater.

It's a hard stroke to describe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sW_HXbkqGc

After 30 seconds, you'll see what I mean.

The biggest problem I've seen in people learning the breaststroke is timing the breath. Unfortunately it's a common problem for a reason. There's no easy fix. The more you do it, the better it will be. Another problem is that they pull their arms too low. When doing the stroke your hands should never be parallel to your chest. They should be just a little passed the neck. This makes the stroke rate faster. More efficient strokes=going faster. Fix it by over emphasizing it. Swim with short fast arms until it becomes more natural.

Since breaststroke is so different than other strokes, you find a lot of swimmers that specialize in it and are poor at others. What makes Brenden Hansen and the other Olympians better than us, is their ability to pull their arms slowly and powerfully, while still recovering very fast. The result is a very awkward looking stroke, but they cruise. Another thing is their underwater pulls. Off of their starts, some swimmers go 20 meters underwater. They go fast underwater, but still maintain energy.

Breaststroke is a strange strange thing. It's also the slowest stroke. Despite looking a little

awkward and not making much sense, there's still some beauty to be found in it. It's fun. I know I

always enjoyed racing this stroke. It's something else to try to break the monotony of freestyle.