Butterfly overall summary

Hey people, and welcome back to my blog. As I have said in the previous post, we're going to start with a brand new style of swimming; the “butterfly”. As usual, we're going to talk about breathing techniques, hand and leg movement, etc, etc. But before we plunge into this new style, I'll first give you a bit of background about my history with this style as well as an “interlude” to the style. So without further ado, let's get straight to it!

My history with the butterfly, to be honest, was NOT a good one. In fact, I grew up despising this style the most out of all the four styles in swimming (the other three being freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke). The first reason is because it is the hardest to do (which I will explain to you later in the post). Starting from a few years ago until this day, I've never managed to get the hand movement correct.

The hand movement itself takes so much energy to muster (at least it takes up a lot of energy after you've already done it a few ten times in a row), and get this: You cannot position your arms TOO high, or your head will soar above the water, and this is illegal in practice (I don't know whether it's legal in competitions, but I never cared to pay attention. But in practice, the coach keeps on flying off the handle looking at my chaotic arm movement).

This simple (actually, not that simple when looking from the trainer's perspective) mistake has caused me to be humiliated by some people in the pool. Others can do the butterfly just fine, so it's just ME. And to add insult to injury, I'm the oldest one in my area (my parents, brother and (occasionally) friends never hesitate to remind me about this) that can't do the butterfly correctly. So basically I'm the “black sheep” when it comes to this style, therefore making it an incredible pain in the @$$.

So anyway, here's the link for the video that will really help you with this post. As usual, you're free NOT to watch it, but I highly recommend you to if you want to make some sense of the rest of the post starting from the next paragraph.

As you can see in the video, the man is moving his feet in a way unique from other styles: He's keeping his feet firm and straight and kicking them in and out of the water, up and down. Then the hands; when swimming butterfly, you move your hands in a way that each hand goes to the back (as shown in the video) then flying across the air (OK, that may have been a big exaggerating) back to its original position. Congratulations! You officially now know how to swim butterfly (at least the basic version, before we get into the breathing, hand movement and all that stuff).

I would've loved to tell you guys some more about butterfly, but unfortunately, this is an overall summary, and not much could be put in it about the style itself. However, join me next time on my blog and I'll fill you in on more details about swimming butterfly. But for now, goodbye and see you until the next post!