Breaststroke: Overall swimming technique

Hey guys, and welcome back to my swimming blog. Today's topic has now changed, and it is no longer freestyle, but breaststroke (do remember, according to the “law” of my blog, the style will change every week). As usual, in these posts about breaststroke we will discuss about breathing techniques, arm movement, leg movement, etc. In this post, we will discuss about the overall discussion about swimming breaststroke (you know, so you get the hang of it before we start “diving” into the more “specific” techniques of breaststroke) before going into all that little movement in breaststroke that will help you in competitions. OK, enough chit-chat, let's get straight to it!

As usual, here's a link to the video that you will want to watch in order to make sense of about 85% of this post. Feel free to read the post without watching it, because all I'm saying is that you might want to watch it in order to use it in combination with this post.

As said in the video, the breaststroke style is made up of two components: the kick (of your feet) and the pull (of your hands). First, let's talk about the kick. Kicking in breaststroke only requires you to bend your knees (this way, part of your feet will be on the surface of the water) and after a few milliseconds (sorry if I may be a bit inaccurate), kick both feet in an arc (basically both legs will bend, making a sort of “circle” shape for a brief second) back to its original position. This will give you a short “glide” through the water.

Here's my advice: Kicking is one component that requires good control: don't kick it too hard, as it will shave off precious milliseconds off of your time and can be tiring (even though it WILL propel you farther with every kick, it's not worth the energy and time). Yet don't kick too fast, since that will ALSO waste your precious energy and not get you very far. Try a “medium” level of kicking. Repeat the breaststroke technique over and over until you reach the finish line (in a race) or when the trainer tells you to stop swimming (practice). Anyway, enough discussion about the feet, let's move on to the hands.

As stated in the video, the hands consist of four phases: The outward sweep, the inward sweep, the recovery, and the “glide”. Here are the instructions on how to do these effectively:
1. First, the outward sweep. Bend your arms 180 degrees from its original straight position.
2. The inward sweep requires you to just “connect” your hands from the “outward sweep” stance onto your chest. This is possibly the shortest stage of the arms.
3. The recovery is basically a short “break” of your hands on your chest. This takes a few miliseconds (yes, I realize that I used that word a lot in this post) at most before you propel your hands back to its original position.
4. The glide? Well, you basically just have to wait for your body to “glide” for a few milliseconds before going back to step 1.
(NOTE: these are all just the BASIC techniques of your hands during breaststroke. I'll fill you in the details about them in later posts)

So that's it for the overall summary of how breaststroke should be swam. I will be back with more insight about how to make your breaststroke faster, more efficient and more effective. But for now, goodbye and see you in the next blog!