Breast stroke recovery...palms up, down, or together?
Dennis Bay
Hello,
Q#1) I'd like to know if it makes a difference (significant or not so)
if during the recovery phase of breast stroke, I recover my arms with
palms facing down, up, or touching together? I'm currently recovering
palms up because someone told me to a long time ago, but I do not know
the rationale for this.
Q#2) Recently, my coach has told me to recover my arms while aiming
down towards the bottom of the pool, at an angle of about 20 degrees
below horizontal, instead of the horizontal that I'm used to. I can see
that doing so may lift my hips a bit and promote an undulating body
motion, but it feels like my arms are pulling less water and it makes it
hard to get my head high up enough to breath during the pull. Any
comments?
If it makes a difference to your answer, I'm a 28 yr old master's
swimmer, and my best 100m breast time (SCM) is 1:26.xx. My breaststroke
would NOT be categorized as the "grasshopper" style where the swimmer
looks like s/he is "bouncing" up and down high out of the water. My
hands never break the surface during the recovery phase.
I suppose the answers would be Ernest Maglischo's book, but I'm a
unfunded grad student and can't afford it. Thanks for your comments.
dennis
denni...@utoronto.ca
RLSeltzer
There have been a number of great articles on breastroke recently. Last
two issues of SWIM magazine features articles by Roque Santos (1992
Olympic swimmer) Most recent issue of Swimming Technique, by the same
publisher, features a series of articles by coaches of successful
breastrokers such as Amanda Beard, Jeremy Linn, Anita Nall, and Penny
Heyns (American and World Record holders)
Breastroke has a great deal of variation in stroke. So any general
comments must be taken with more than a grain of salt.Here's how I
approach breastroke recovery.
Palms in forming a tent at the completion of insweep. I focus on having
them meet with great acceleration with accompanying inward snap of elbows.
At the same time, I lunge forward with the trunk of my body and make sure
that my head looks down at the water just inn front of my hands. I keep my
hands at or above the surface. My arms are just below the surface. My
extension is almost horizontal. If anything, I feel a slight upward
orientation of my hands relative to the my forearm.(Raise both your hands
about 2 inches off the computer keyboard. This is how my hands feel in
relation to my forearms). When I experimented with a downward thrust
during recovery I felt increased resistance, slower hand speed, more
turbulence.
As the arms extend, the palms are rotated down (The tent collapses). My
head is looking down ready to resume its rightful place between my arms in
preparation for my favorite part of breastroke -- the streamline!
The breastroke recovery is discussed in detail in the articles listed
above.
I recommend that you experiment with some of the ideas that these great
coaches have regarding breastroke but keep an open mind and be prepared to
improvise.
Good luck
Joerg Schoebel
Dennis Bay wrote:
> Q#1) I'd like to know if it makes a difference (significant or not so)
> if during the recovery phase of breast stroke, I recover my arms with
> palms facing down, up, or touching together? I'm currently recovering
> palms up because someone told me to a long time ago, but I do not know
> the rationale for this.
You are right, the answer is in Maglischo's book: there should be a
strong
inward motion of the elbows at the end of the arm stroke. This quite
naturally brings palms inward or even upward in the recovery.
If you don't do wave-style breaststroke, IMHO it doesn't make any
difference.
> Q#2) Recently, my coach has told me to recover my arms while aiming
> down towards the bottom of the pool, at an angle of about 20 degrees
> below horizontal, instead of the horizontal that I'm used to. I can see
> that doing so may lift my hips a bit and promote an undulating body
> motion, but it feels like my arms are pulling less water and it makes it
> hard to get my head high up enough to breath during the pull. Any
> comments?
Maybe you should aim downwards only at the end of the recovery,
which would make breathing easier.
I do quite an extreme wave style: I start the recovery with an upward
motion of the hands and bring my lower arms easily out of the water. I
end the recovery with a slight downward motion of the hands mainly to
get the
body moving more forward than upward.
> If it makes a difference to your answer, I'm a 28 yr old master's
> swimmer, and my best 100m breast time (SCM) is 1:26.xx. My breaststroke
> would NOT be categorized as the "grasshopper" style where the swimmer
> looks like s/he is "bouncing" up and down high out of the water. My
> hands never break the surface during the recovery phase.
>
> I suppose the answers would be Ernest Maglischo's book, but I'm a
> unfunded grad student and can't afford it. Thanks for your comments.
>
> dennis
> denni...@utoronto.ca
Joerg
--
Joerg Schoebel <J.Sch...@tu-bs.de>
Institut fuer Hochfrequenztechnik tel: +49-531-3912462
TU Braunschweig fax: +49-531-3915841
Dennis Bay
Thank you for your response. I have posted a copy of this followup in
rec.sport.swimming .
>Dennis,
>Breaststroke is easiest to swim and hardest to master only because
>unlike crawl it really depends on your strength.
I thought breaststroke was more dependent on technique than strength and
that's why we have tiny 14-year-old girls going to the olympics in this
event whereas the freestylers/flyers (e.g. van Dyken, Martino,...) are
all HUGE. In my own experience as a master's swimmer, I find that my
lack of strength hinders my freestyle performances though IMHO my
technique is pretty good, (though I guess lack of height has to do with
it as well--5'6"); in comparison, I seem to do well in breaststroke
events where others are much stronger but lack technique.
> By going down into the water as mentioned in q#2 you can get most out of
> your kick.(aka as butterfly like) This is done when your kick is stronger
> than your upperbody. Skipping water is done when you have just about same
> strength on your kick and your upperbody. What skipping allows you to do is
> to have faster recovery of arm so you can use kick to glide longer. I don't
> think I or anyone can answer these question.
Hmmm....OK I understand that the butterfly-like kick results from the
undulating body motion, but I thought that the purpose of this was to
compensate for a weak kick. I thought that the
get-your-upper-body-high-out-of-the-water breast stroke (= "skipping" ?)
was the one dependent on a strong kick (my coach always discouraged this
in me because he said I don't have the legs for it).
> Only you can. I don't belive that book can help. Thing that you can do is
> that copy other people's techniques. I suggest you watch the 1996 olympic
> 200m male and female breaststroke. There are 6 different styles in these
> two races. Notables being A. Beard's skipping, S. Riley's butterfly like,
> P.Haynes' power breaststroke, and Kurt Grote's "right way" stroke.
Thanks for your advice, unfortunately I don't have tapes of the
olympics, but I'll check my tapes of the US trials held at Indianapolis.
Could you elaborate a bit on the "power breast stroke" anf "right way"
stroke?
Thanks for all your help.
dennis
denni...@utoronto.ca
Dennis Bay
A copy of this reply has been posted to rec.sport.swimming.
>Rick Donnelly
>01/24/97 12:25 PM
Thank you for your detailed answer and the e-mail reply (my newserver
deletes messages after 3 or 4 days). :-(
======
> Palms together is, according to what I've read, cleaner (less resistance),
> but palms up is a natural position when you actually complete your pull (i.e.
> if your hands are effectively working throughout the stroke, they are still
> pushing water back when they begin to come together under your shoulderblades
> - do this in slow motion in air and look at how they are angled to provide
> propulsion throughout the motion). Once they begin to recover beyond the
> shoulders, however, all propulsive effort is lost, so then you are looking
> for the most efficient way to recover the arms without interfering with the
> driving force of the kick. This is why the out of water recovery is gaining
> so much popularity - much less resistence.
Yes, but my coach and I agree that the out-of-the-water-recovery type of
breaststroke is not for me....so do you think palms together would still
benefit my relatively "flat" breaststroke? (i.e. my breaststroke could
probably be characterized as a refined version of what the Red Cross
teaches for kids' swimming lessons--I used to be an instructor as a
teenager). AND, should I combine "palms-together" with the "downward"
recovery angle, or is it only to be used with an
out-of-the-water-recovery?
======
...snip....
> As to getting your head up, it sounds as though you may have a timing problem
> in your stroke. You don't need to come up high to breathe (though the current
> stroke taught has swimmers comming up twice as high (or more) than that
> which I was taught in the mid-70's). The modern stroke has folks coming up
> high so that they can dive back into the water, using gravity and the
> resulting body undulations to assist the forward motion. You need to breathe
> late in the pull, not early (arms even with shoulders), where the pull is at
> its strongest (and thus compensates for the increased resistence of
> breathing). Pulling at the proper time in the stroke should eliminate this
> discomfort.
I think my coach has solved this for me--I was letting my head follow my
hands at the downward angle and thus letting it get too deep; if I let
my hands recover downward but not let my head follow it seems to be
easier to breathe. When I do breathe, I always try to raise my head by
the minimum amount needed to get my mouth out of the water simply
because I lack physical strength.
======
> You will want to perfect the timing a little
> better - try swimming with paddles and a pull bouy and find the spot in the
> stroke where breathing is most comfortable.
I threw away my regular paddles years ago due to paranoia about
swimmer's shoulders, but I think I still have my "breaststroke paddles".
They look like small boomer-rangs that cover only my fingers (not
palms). Have you heard of these, and should I use them for breaststroke?
In my years of working as a lifeguard/swim instructor as a teenager and
now as a masters swimmer, I have never seen anyone else use these--are
they bogus?
======
> Another addition to the stroke that improves speed remarkably (though it
> feels funny for a while and may cause some sore muscles until you are used to
> it) is to dorsi-flex the wrists (i. e. turn your fingers toward the sides of
> the pool) as you begin your stroke. This places the hands in a much stronger
> positiion and emphasizes the motive forces at the tail end of the pull.
>
>Rick
Intriguing....I'll try it tonight at practice but I'll probably need you
to elaborate a bit.
======
Thank you for your comprehensive answer, and I apologize for my long
reply, but I hope this thread benefits others in r.s.swimming.
dennis
denni...@utoronto.ca
Alexx Diep
Dennis,
I have a different way of teaching the breastroke recovery.
First of all, I never encourage the out-of-the-water-recovery for long
distance events (200m breast and in IMs) simply because it demands too
much energy. Though it's perfect for sprints events!
As for the palms up, down, or together recovery, I have always prefer a
combination of the palms together and the palms down recovery. I believe
it was Rick Donnely who said palms together is cleaner (less
resistance), he was right on! It's cleaner and more efficient because it
permits your whole body to glide through the turbulence (generated by
the hand/arm sculling movement) better. Now having your palms facing
down increase the gliding surface and thus helps you travel through the
water farther on every stroke. That is why you should keep your palms
together when you first attempt to recover but as you go along the
motion, try to have one hand on top of the other, palms facing down! I
usually tell my swimmers to change-up (from palms together to facing
down) as soon as the elbows reaches the eyes level. This technique is
ideal for swimmers who tend to have longer gliding phase.
One more thing you could do to help your gliding is to "PRESS YOUR
BUOY", right Terry? :) Everytime your chest comes down along with the
arms recovery, press your chest downwards. This will help your gliding a
lot!
Hope this helped! Any comments/feedbacks are welcome!
Alexx