Breastroke

We all know that breastrokers are not made, they are born… yeah right! Sure, some kids are born with a natural breaststroke kick but we don’t make excuses here, we overcome our challenges. Teaching breaststroke to young swimmers can be difficult because they tend to overuse their arms and legs when in fact breaststroke is a minimalist stroke. 

Overall, the essential components that make up breaststroke include:

• Timing
• Streamlined swimming
• Small arms
• Body Position 

As with butterfly, timing is near the top of the list of what makes a good and pretty looking breaststroke. As we go through the drills that progress our swimmers into the full stroke, you will notice that the upper and lower body of the stroke are separated out and performed independently during the stroke cycle. First, the upper body does its thing, then we get back into a streamline, and finally the lower body does its thing. Kids who rush the stroke end up creating a situation where the upper body is fighting the lower body. This creates drag and drag creates slow. 

Breaststroke is the slowest stroke of the four because it has the lowest power: drag ratio. Most of this comes from a high drag level because the upper body is so exposed to the oncoming water. The most successful breastrokers are the ones who learn to cut through the water and return to a streamlined state during the glide to take advantage of the powerful breaststroke kick.

An essential component of breaststroke is to train a small kick and small arms early on. Most young swimmers take big arm strokes and big kicks during breaststroke. Why not? We want to go fast, right? So using the arms to their fullest and legs to their fullest will generate fast swimming, right? As we said before, breaststroke is the minimalist’s stroke. Too big an arm stroke and too big a kick interferes with the timing of the stroke and causes the swimmer to get “stuck” in a high drag position with their eyes up and hands at the hips. 

Lastly, young swimmers need to learn efficiency and distance per stroke before we start increasing tempo (as many elite breastrokers do). We must always learn to swim correctly slowly before we swim correctly fastly. The most important aspect to creating an efficient, low drag stroke is to return to a horizontal body position between each stroke cycle. Just like in freestyle or butterfly, the water flows around a horizontal body better than a vertical one. Let’s get started.

Basic Drills

Wall Kick= Proper kicking

If anyone knows of a surefire way to teach an 8-year-old (or 15-year-old for that matter) how to turn a whip kick into a proper breaststroke kick, please email sales@swimsmarttoday.com with your incredible solution because we don’t have a great answer. The best way we know of to teach swimmers how to properly develop their breaststroke kick is at the wall. 

If you try to have swimmers adjust their kicking while they are swimming regular breaststroke while trying not to hit the person in front of them and trying leave the wall at the correct time… it’s too much. Just eliminate everything and focus on the kick while hanging onto the wall. In addition, because the kids aren’t swimming away from you, you can give them real-time feedback to help them develop a symmetric, snappy, small breaststroke kick. And because they are kicking against a wall that offers high resistance, the kids will be able to feel the water with the feet much better than if they were moving through the water. This gives them the best chance of doing a good breaststroke kick. This isn’t the perfect solution, but it seems to work better than anything else. 

You can even spend an entire day just working the breaststroke kick. Start by doing several repeats on the wall with constant feedback and instruction. Then move to kicking with a kickboard trying to mimic the same motion you had on the wall. And after all that we can finally do our next drill...

No Arm Breastroke (NAB) = Timing (Breathe-Kick-Glide (BKG))

A powerful kick with poor timing is useless. The upper body is usually the culprit in what ruins this timing and getting rid of it will help us build the proper timing of the stroke while taking full advantage of the amazing kick we developed previously. 

As pictured, start in a streamline, as all great strokes do. Next, lift the head and breathe. Do your best not to use your arms, however a little motion is ok; we just don’t want to take a full sweeping stroke. The kick comes second as the head is going back down in a streamline. Lastly, we take advantage of the kick and the hyper-streamlined position and just glide. This BKG timing is such a powerful drill we commonly use it in races with young swimmers! It forces them to have good timing and take full advantage of a streamlined stroke. 

Tangent: This is another great drill to replace typical breastroke board kicking. Don’t let young swimmers swim mindlessly! 

Wall Arms = Small Arms

Now that we have the timing and the kick down, we can start adding in the upper body to the mix. If you have ever coached youngins, you probably have gotten a DQ slip for “Pulling past the hips.” Not only will too big an arm sweep ruin our timing and slow us down, it also gets us disqualified. So, the first thing we will work on in the upper body of breaststroke is keeping the arm movement small and fast.

Start on your stomach at the edge of the pool with your upper body hanging over the water. The edge of the pool is at about level with the bottom of the sternum, right where you would do CPR. Next, extend the arms out and have the head down, just like a streamline. 

Then, practice lifting the head and doing a quick arm sweep. Because the wall is sitting under you at the level of the lower chest, the elbows can’t go past the shoulders and the arms need to almost “bounce” off the wall and shoot back forward. This drill simply teaches what a small arm sweep should feel like and we want to focus on never letting the elbows pull back further than about shoulder level. 

2-Kicks 1-Pull (2k1p)= Body Position

Now that we have our upper body trained, lower body ready and timing perfected, we can start putting it all together slowly. By forcing swimmers to take two kicks while in a streamline instead of just one, we slow the entire stroke down. This allows the kids focus on maintaining a streamlined gliding position and set up their timing for their pull. 

Breast to Streamline (B2S) = Streamlined swimming

Finally B2S drill is simply normal breaststroke with an additional pause and exaggeration of the streamlined position. This is another great drill to make kids perform during a race and force them to swim correctly even. 

Advanced Drills

Breast with Freestyle Kick= Fast hands

The absolute worst position to spend any amount of time in during breaststroke is the “cocked” position immediately after the arm pull where the arms and elbows are by the chest and the upper body is out of streamline. We want the hands to move fast and bounce off the chest and immediately start pushing forward to get back in a streamlined position. 

By freestyle kicking, we take out the pause often taken by kids who are waiting for the legs to catch up. This allows the arms to instantly shoot back out to their streamlined position after their part is done. Adding in fins to the drill gives the kids extra speed which makes them feel even more of a need to get the arms out of the way and back in a streamline.

Breast with Fly Kick = Undulation

While not as dramatic as in butterfly, breaststroke has just a touch of undulation. The hips really shouldn’t move up and down much, but the upper and lower bodies tend to have a bit of a wave pattern to them. Doing breastroke with a butterfly kick (plus or minus fins) helps kids feel that undulation.

Summary of Drills:

• Wall Kick= Proper kicking
• No Arm Breastroke (NAB) = Timing (Breathe-Kick-Glide (BKG))
• Wall Arms = Small Arms
• 2-Kicks 1-Pull (2k1p)= Body Position
• Breast to Streamline (B2S) = Streamlined swimming

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• Breast with Freestyle Kick= Fast hands
• Breast with Fly Kick = Undulation

Teaching the Breastroke Pullout

Teaching the pullout in breaststroke is almost like teaching an entire new stroke. Luckily, the individual components are really not difficult, it is just a matter of learning the proper sequence and timing. And because a good pullout can take you half-way across the pool, we should spend some time (probably up to half our time!) working on perfecting it. Here are all the components of a good pullout with timing included:

1. Push-off in a streamline (duh)
2. Glide two Mississippis
3. One big dolphin kick while still in a streamline and holding the upper body as still as possible
4. Pull down with chin tucked and head in streamline
5. SQUEEZE TIGHT two Mississippis
6. Sneak the arms up and kick them forward. Head stays in streamline the whole time. Don’t look up.
7. Glide one Mississippi
8. Take the first stroke and break out!

Before you go writing up this whole sequence and trying to teach everyone on the team how to do a pullout, one piece of advice: skip the pullout with kids younger than about nine. Kids this young struggle to just leave the wall in a tight streamline. Spend time learning those more basic skills rather than a complicated pullout.

Now, how do we teach this long sequence of events to a slightly older but still active ten-year-old? Simply build the sequence one piece at a time. First, work on steps 1&2. Have the kids stop after step 2.

1. Push-off in a streamline (duh)
2. Glide two Mississippis

Next, get kids out of the water and explain the next step and what you are looking for. Don’t keep doing the full pullout every time. Just work the sequence over and over adding the next line as the kids get proficient. 

1. Push-off in a streamline (duh)
2. Glide two Mississippis
3. One big dolphin kick while still in a streamline and holding the upper body as still as possible

Repeat, repeat and repeat until you have all the sequences built up. Now, you have a ten-year-old who can crush competitors off any wall!