Swimming 101: The Butterfly Stroke
- In This Quick Guide:
- The Butterfly Pull
- The Recovery
- Timing Your Breathing
- The Butterfly Kick
The butterfly stroke is one of the more complex strokes for a swimmer, but it is not difficult to master once you know the proper technique. In this guide, we will take you through every step of the stroke and show you the proper positions for every step. Take your time and learn it the right way, and you’ll be swimming like a pro in no time.
The Butterfly Pull
It’s a little simplistic, but a very general way to think of the butterfly pull is to think of just doing two freestyle pulls at the same time. Both hands enter extended in front of you, just outside shoulder width; you bend at the elbow and keep the elbow high in the water and pull back the length of the body. We’ll break that down to specifics, but if you keep that general picture in mind, you’ll have no problem grasping the concepts.
First, we highly encourage you to put on a pair of swimming fins before trying the butterfly pull. While it seems kind of contradictory because you won’t be kicking, fins do a great job of keeping your body on the surface.
Once you’re in the pool, extend your body out on the surface of the water facing the bottom of the pool. Make sure your legs are straight behind you and your arms are extended out front. Your hand placement should be just as we discussed; slightly outside the shoulders is great. Your palms will be facing downward, and your eyes will be looking toward the bottom of the pool (not the opposite wall).
When you’re ready to take a pull, you will bend at the elbow so that your fingertips now point down. Your elbows shouldn’t move much and should remain at the same height in the water. Now is the time to propel yourself forward, which you will do by pushing water behind you, down the length of your body, and past the hips.
Think of it this way: you’ll push a lot more water using your entire arm than you will with just the back of the triceps. Yet the latter is a common problem many beginning butterfly swimmers have because they allow their elbows to drop. And once that happens, the entire stroke tends to break down because you need a strong pull to maintain the rhythm of the stroke. If you can’t set up your body position for a proper kick because you weren’t able to maintain height in the water (due to the arms dropping), it becomes extremely hard to fight that resistance.
From the elbow down to the fingertips, the arm will stay straight all the way through the pull until the hands begin to pass the hips. As you’re pulling, make sure your arms aren’t wide and away from the body. The pull is relatively compact, and the hands glide just outside the body throughout the duration of the pull.
When your hands enter in front of you, you bend at the elbow while leaving your hands in the same plane along the sides of the body. Draw an imaginary line in your head as to where those hands started, and as you pull back, make sure they exit the water on that same line behind you.
The Recovery
As you finish your pull, your arms will be at full extension and your hands will be past your hips. At this point, your palms will be facing up, so we have to rotate the arms as we exit the water.
When your hands break the surface, rotate the arms so that the thumbs are facing down. Keeping your arms straight, make half moon shapes with both and recover them both back to the same position in which you started. Keep the arms low, and avoid the temptation to just throw them forward. If you raise your arms up too high, the first thing that happens is your shoulder blades come together—and it acts almost as a weight on your back. Your chest will get pushed down and your body position will suffer, causing a lot of drag and preventing you from staying relaxed and fluid with your stroke.
The arms stay extended during the recovery phase; bending them can result in pushing the chest down.
Timing Your Breathing
Breathing during the butterfly is done on an as-needed basis. What doesn’t change, though, is the portion of the stroke where it is done. Whereas in freestyle, for instance, you can choose to breathe on either side of the body, in the butterfly it is simply done by lifting the chin up and clearing the mouth above the water’s surface and breathing in.
As you’re beginning your pull backward, surging your body toward the other end of the pool, tilt your head back just enough that you are able to open your mouth without taking in water. This will certainly take some practice, but with each breath, do so with the intent on staying as low as possible. As we’ve mentioned, the more out of alignment you make yourself, the more liable you are to cause a drop in your torso and your hips. This is one reason why many coaches teach their swimmers to take as few breaths as possible, because it causes the least disruption in the body line. Swimmers who have a high level of skill in keeping that line while taking a breath, though, are certainly less affected by this.
The Butterfly Kick
The kick used in the butterfly stroke is called the “dolphin kick.” This is somewhat misleading, though, because hearing the word “kick” naturally makes people think of using just their legs. The dolphin kick is really derived from the core and is a motion that works itself through the entire body. To make it as simplistic as possible, we still suggest wearing fins until you get the hang of things.
The dolphin kick is done with the legs together, moving as one. Think of a dolphin, mermaid, or even a shark: their propulsion is from one motion in the lower extremity that gently and easily pushes water behind them and moves them forward. If you can picture doing that yourself with your legs, you’re already on the right track.
Properly conducting a dolphin kick starts in the upper body, pressing the chest down and then having the rest of the body follow suit with a whipping-like motion that extends through the toes. When doing this kick, you’ll maintain a slight bend in the knees—and make sure you point your toes to the end of the pool behind you.
The dolphin kick used when swimming the butterfly is not a standard kick because there are actually two kicks done per cycle. There is a kick done when the hands first enter the water and another as the hands are passing the midsection. The two kicks that make up one normal butterfly dolphin kick are not of equal stature. The first kick can almost be looked at as a “setup” kick for the bigger second kick.
As the hands enter the water for your pull (where your arms are extended), press the chest down into the water and allow that motion to continue down the body and kick downward with your feet. As you go through your pull, the legs will rise back up toward the surface a bit—and as the hands are pulling past your midsection, do a second, more powerful kick. This second kick (when done properly) will make it easy for you to stay high in the water and get your arms back around to the initial starting point.
As you learn to swim the butterfly, a small trick to remember is ensuring you don’t remain tight throughout the chest muscles. While true for every stroke in different ways, it is especially important to stay relaxed during the butterfly. It takes a lot of flexibility, especially throughout the torso and down through the legs, to be done properly. Have a great swim!
From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Swimming by Mike Bottom and Nathan Jendrick
