Well I had a breakthrough of sorts this week.

It's still VERY much a work in progress, but I actually managed to swim a full length of butterfly a few days ago. I know it doesn't sound like much of a milestone, but it is for me. I'm still VERY inconsistent and slow but until now all I've been doing is dolphin kick exercises and single "pull" exercises (pushing from the bottom and no kicking to get the arm motion down).

Well, Monday my imaginary "Low Energy" light came on after only 10 lengths of my usual 40 length workout (seemed unable to catch my breath for some reason) so I abandoned that and decided that a HAD to accomplish SOMETHING.

I decided that it was high time I put the exercises together and do a complete, uninterrupted butterfly all the way across the pool if it KILLED me! It took a few attempts but what I settled on was a pattern of 3 kicks, then a pull. Very choppy and obviously not "correct", but legit enough for me. I managed to do a total of about 3 lengths....decided to quit before I got too tired and became frustrated.

It still AMAZES me how much more muscle this stroke takes. I normally have no problems swimming half a mile of breast and free, but to be totally EXHAUSTED after only covering 1 length is humbling to say the least! The tops on my thighs seem to give up the ghost first and I can feel my upper abs have worked quite hard this week too. Still, I muddled my way through a total of 10 legit lengths today.

My plan now is to stick with a total of 10 lengths and keep working on the smoothness and stamina. But for all intents and purposes, I FINALLY reached my goal of learning to butterfly!

Hi dude!Gratz!It seems you do well and i can give you a tip ot 2...But to advance you have to practice.
I think that your problem is because of your incorrect technique.Kicking to an arm cycle is usually 2/1 in butterfly, and the third kick is just useless.In my opinion you do a third kick because you can't emerge out of the water enough to breathe and you waste much more energy.You must take a breath when you kick the second time and your hands are just about to get out of the water, but before you do that take a breath and then submerge your head fast. practice practice practice...

(Nov 11, 2011 11:28am)mastapeace Wrote:  Hi dude!Gratz!It seems you do well and i can give you a tip ot 2...But to advance you have to practice.
I think that your problem is because of your incorrect technique.Kicking to an arm cycle is usually 2/1 in butterfly, and the third kick is just useless.

Hi mastapeace and thanks for the kudos.

Well what a difference a day makes! I am aware of the 2/1 and that has been a major part of the focus now. Today I focused largely on only 2 kicks per pull and I think I'm about weaned off of this 3 kick crutch. I still have a tendency to pause after the kicks resulting in a jerky stroke, but it IS smoothing out....I can tell a difference already from where I was yesterday.

Stamina is still a problem but there has been improvement there too. Today I did a decent 10 lengths (with 1-2 minutes in between) but unlike yesterday I didnt have any incomplete lengths (where my muscles just REFUSE to move and I can't get my arms out of the water prior to the end. Had 2 incomplete lengths yesterday....so actually I did closer to 12 total). I have tomorrow and Sunday to work on this more until I leave town for a few days. Ideally I'll soon be able to do 10 reasonably smooth lengths with minimal resting in between and once I reach that point, it'll be time to add more lengths and start mixing up some breast and freestyle into my routine again.

Well I'm still pluggin away on the 'fly. My back decided to flake out on me a couple of weeks ago and between that and a recent vacay trip I'm a little behind the ideal curve in bringing my stamina up to par, but I am improving.

What I'm trying to do is get myself to a point where I can do 10 lengths at a stab with more time swimming than resting. When I first started timing this routine, it took over 21 minutes to get through the 10. Yesterday I had it down to less than 18....not a huge improvement, but improvement nonetheless. I've noticed that the limiting factor is shifting from being out of breath to simple being out of muscle...IE toward the end of the length I'm unable to get my arms up and out of the water, especially the last 3 or 4 lengths. Since a length of butterfly is taking me just under 30 seconds (25 meter pool) I need to get the time to below 10 minutes.

Wednesday I will finally see the swim instructor again and hopefully I can get some feedback on the kick timing. I'm doing 2/pull, but I feel like the timing is off and I'm hoping for some live guidance on smoothing things out. In the meantime, even if I'm not doing the stroke perfectly, I can tell it's really firming up my midsection and noticeably increasing my overall fitness.

Well an overdue update.
The lesson in mid December was extremely helpful. Long story short, my kick timing was indeed off....WAY offf LOL. This was making the pull more of a lifting exercise rather than a means toward forward motion. I was also coming out of the water far more than necessary. Now that I have the kicks occurring at the right time the stroke has become a great deal easier and I decided to double my workout to a total of 20 lengths. I'm sure this still sounds like a very minimal workout to some here but it is working for me and since I don't plan on any competitive swimming any time in the future I'm content with this setup for the moment.

Stamina is still my biggest problem, but it is getting better. Yesterday I completed 10 lengths in 11:50 and continued to complete 20 in 26:30.....a FAR cry from where a was a few weeks ago. I still find myself struggling to get my muscles to move sufficiently as I near the end of a length especially in the second set of 10 but it is nowhere near as much of a struggle as it was before. I'm very close to my initial goal of doing 10 lengths in less than 10 minutes (which is more swimming than resting) and as my stamina builds I hope to be smoothing out the entire stroke. I still feel I'm a bit choppy or mechanical but that seems to be improving slowly as well.

All in all, I'm very pleased with myself LOL.

Good job man. You are improving pretty fast. keep the good work!

Well a major breakthrough at LAST! Today I FINALLY broke through the 10 minute barrier after weeks of stagnation and little to no noticeable improvement in stamina. Lately accomplishing 10 lengths has been hovering around 11-12 minutes and it seemed like this "plateau" would never end. Today I did it in 9:34! I'm not sure but I have a feeling I know what might have helped this big improvement to come about.

A couple of weeks ago I shared a lane with a guy about my age (he looked to be in his late 30s tho) who was far, FAR beyond my level and he offered this advice: Try dolphin kicking underwater for as long as possible on one breath. He said that this helped his 'fly a great deal when he swam competitively many years ago. He then proceeded to demonstrate this effortlessly all the way across the 25 yard pool AFTER he'd been working out continuously for at least 35 minutes that I saw (I suspect he works out much longer that 35 minutes).

When I tried it, I made it about 1/3 across and surfaced with almost a feeling of panic from not being able to breathe. Obviously I have a ways to go on this exercise. I decided to incorporate this into some other drills on my workout days and it seemed that I was hitting a wall here as well: generally I'd make it almost halfway across, one time last week I managed about 2/3 but could not repeat it.

I've kept plugging away with this anyway and while I'm not seeing a great improvement in the distance I can cover with one breath, I DO sense my speed better since I can see how fast the tiles are moving as I skim along near the bottom and I think this exercise may be helping my dolphin technique in terms of efficiency. I don't know my lungs are actually becoming more efficient or if I'm kicking better or maybe I'm just improving in a more general way......whatever...today was a MAJOR jump for me!

Tomorrow I get another session with the instructor and hopefully he will (as he always has) find things for me to work on to continue improving my stroke. I'm loving the FLY!