Name: The Secret to Perfect Breaststroke Technique
Uploaded: 2018-02-27T15:52:43.000Z
Duration: 5 min 48 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is Brenton Rickard, world medallist in
the one hundred and two hundred breaststroke demonstrating

technique. One of the key things I look
for is face position where his hands and

feet are together in a straight line.
It's important in breaststroke when

swimming it, that you get great distance
per stroke. Brenton does a lot of

his work on stroke count, as you look
here we don't want too much head

movement and the body really travels
fastest just below the surface, as we

In Breaststroke most of the power comes from a
combination of the legs and the arms and

with the arms we're looking at more
propellor type sweeping motions rather than

pull, push, as you have in
butterfly, freestyle and backstroke.

The feet movement is predominantly
backwards and together, I think 10 years

to 15 years ago it was more around and
together, but now the modern

breaststroker is pushing back and
together. It's very important to have

great ankle flexibility and hip and knee
joint mobility.

When breathing in breaststroke we want
the swimmer to move with the stroke not

to have a separate head movement. He
comes up with the arm stroke catching

the water his body neck and back
moves, rather than his head bobbing up

and down to take the breath. It is
important to look forward when taking

this breath without too much head
nodding and interference with stroke

length in front. The modern breaststroker
recovers his hands close to the surface.

A number of the famous breaststrokers
bring their hands out of just above

the surface at race speed, now what we're
watching at the moment is fairly easy

technique but Brenton he is trying to
get his hands up just in front of his

chin and keep them close to the surface
as he recovers have them forward to the

full extension. At the start of the
stroke the swimmer presses outwards and

some of the breaststrokers press a
little bit upwards, but it is a wide

position and then it starts to catch in
at that catch position is where the head

starts to come up for the breath, so the
breath is a result of that beginning of

This shot here shows that when the kick
is completing there is an acceleration

the feet must come together, by doing
this the swimmer is exacting most power

from the kicking motion. A number of swimmers we see in breaststroke cut their kick

short and do not bring the legs together.
I think this causes great inefficiency.

00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:14,230
This underwater shot shows the arm stroke
again once again full extension then an

outward sweep to catch the water, and then an inward sweep then forward for recovery.

accelerate and come together and the arc
of the backward motion is quite narrow.

The best breaststrokers are doing this
it appears and getting a more of a

backward and together motion rather than
outward and around together motion as

they were say 15-20 years ago. This shot
shows full extension at the front and

also  the knees trying to keep them
in line with the body rather than drop

them underneath the hips. In breaststroke
predominate power I believe comes from

the hip movement and once we connect
with the core through our arms it is

important that this is the generating
power. Looking at all good breaststrokers

I feel that you need to have your hips
up near the surfaces as in these shots

After the initial extension their hands
press outwards and catching the water

the wide position which is outside the
shoulder. At that position the in sweep

begins and this is the most propulsive
part of the breaststroke. When the in

sweep is occurring the head is coming up
to breathe, and after the breath is taken it

is important that the swimmer recovers
the hands forward because if this is a

non propulsive phase of the stroke and
it's important to get the hands back and

forward to the base or frontal position.
Breaststroke is one of  those strokes where

I feel it's easy to do the stroke poorly
but to do it correctly is extremely

difficult. When teaching breaststroke or
developing an athlete to compete at

higher levels I think it's very
important that we focus on doing the

stroke well, maybe doing many many drills
with it rather than doing lots of it

poorly.
Breast stroke can be swam by many

people poorly, but by very very few well.

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The Secret to Perfect Breaststroke Technique

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