Daft breast-stoke question?

gentlygently

How quickly do you go from one full stroke to the next?

I do middling on breast. My stroke looks pretty good, I overtake quite a few people, but I am still overtaken by others with obvious technical flaws (heads up, screw kick or whatever). This is obviousky annoying!

I suspect I am not catching the water that efficiently foot/leg wise (doing drills to help improve). But I also suspect my overall stroke is just a bit slow - clearly I'm enjoying that glide....! Judging by some of those around me in the pool....

How fast do you make each stroke repetition?

And if you aimed to speed it all up, any hints?

(I was suggested I do butterfly to 'ah, ah, ah, ah staying alive, staying alive...' ,I more or less manage 'oh little town of Bethlehem' i think - before I sink that is!)

Macstraw

The cadence for breast stroke is "Kick, Glide, Pull". Use the kick to propel you forward as your arms are recovering up along your body & shooting out in front of you for the next stroke. As the arms shoot out is where the glide comes in, then the pull. That cadence works no matter what pace you set for yourself, quicken the pace for more speed but still think of the 3 distinct parts. Make sure you're getting a good "grip" on the water when you pull, you should feel the resistance of the water all along the arms. You want to make sure you're getting the most bang for the buck on the pull....

gentlygently

Thanks Macstraw.

The flow or cadence of my stroke is pretty good I think (have had many a lesson..) and i have a reasonable arm water pull etc. (feet could do better!)

But I have noticed people repeat the full cadence stroke at quite different rates, and I guess I am interested in how much attention people in this group put into this aspect of the stoke and how they measure it.

Most stuff on the web etc talks about stroke efficiency but not overall stroke pacing. Any thoughts on this?

Macstraw

The pacing is directly related to how fast you want to go. That said, it will be affected by the length of your pull. I'm always a firm believer in using the longest pull possible. If you're competing, the breast stroke pull can't go past the hip line but there's no reason it can't go that far. I watch so many people swimming breaststroke who shorten their pull so much just so that they can move their arms fast. If the arms straight out over your head were at the 12:00 position on a clock, some of them are only pulling to 11:00 & 1:00. I prefer to see the pull get close to 9:00 & 3:00, with the hands coming up along the body on the recovery. If you can get the longer pull like that AND keep a quick pace, you will really increase your speed. When I swim breast, I think in my mind "Kick, Glide, Pull" & count it off at the pace I want to swim it (not that any pace I use is fast), I find that using a cadence like that is like working with a drumbeat & I can set how fast (or sloe) I want that to be. The people you see going at different rates - look to see if there is a difference in the lengths of their pulls, that might explain the different pacing....

fishgutzy

My kick sux. But then I don't do much breast stroke
I do observe others' techniques while I am swimming so if I do decide to try it again I can work on my technique. One that impressed me most was a guy whose breast stroke lap time was just shy of his free style time. And in my observations, that is pretty rare.
When i was in China, it seemed that was all the Chinese knew how to do was the breast stroke. In a crowded pool with no lane ropes? Not cool. I had to be very careful twisting near another swimmer.

Macstraw

It's very rare, indeed, for a breaststroke time to be almost as fast as freestyle - that's more likely (although still pretty rare) for a good butterflier.....

One thing that will help get more propulsion in the kick is to turn the feet so they're pointed out.....