How to Swim Competitive Butterfly Stroke

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, gives an overview of the butterfly stroke, which is the second fastest swimming stroke.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. The butterfly stroke: Butterfly is one of the most magnificent strokes of all four strokes. However, it is one stroke in which the technique cannot be flawed, so we'll start off talking about it in baby steps. The butterfly stroke is the second fastest stroke next to freestyle. The arm motion and the leg motion are synchronized, utilizing a dolphin-type kick and butterfly-type arms, arms like these, and as most of you can imagine or visualize, a dolphin kick, a flat up-and-down dolphin kick, bending at the knees, following all the way through to the toes. Butterfly races: There are seven events in which the butterfly is actually used. These include the 50-meter individual, the 100 individual sprint and the 200 mid-distance sprint. It also includes the 100 medley, the 200 individual medley, the 400 individual medley, and the 4 x 100 medley relay."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches how to do the butterfly arm motion, which takes a lot of upper body strength to master.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. The butterfly arm motion. The butterfly arm motion is rather simple in theory but it involves quite a bit and it takes an incredible amount of upper body strength, so what we'll do is we'll start from a basic starting point. Up at the top, in your finish position, you'll work on bending the elbows for the catch, which again is the most important part of any stroke, the catch portion with your palms facing towards you. You work on your pull and just about the time when your arms are reaching your chest line, you're going to go into your push. Now you're going to go just to your hips, just at your hip line as far as the finish is concerned, and then recover back out of the water. The really important aspect of this stroke is you don't want to break the centerline. You don't want to come to the centerline as far as your stroke is concerned. Not only does this impact the shoulders but it also takes some time out of your stroke, coming all the way to here as opposed to in line with your shoulders. Catch, pull, push, recover. Catch, pull, push and recover."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches how to kick in the butterfly stroke by using a technique known as the dolphin kick.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. The butterfly kick: The butterfly kick is comprised of, simply put, the dolphin kick, which many of us know and many of us practiced and worked on and played with when we were first learning how to swim. "Hey, mommy, I can swim like a dolphin," was very common. Basically, you're going to be utilizing your knees. You're going to be utilizing everything from your knees down to your toes. A lot of people have fallen under the thought that you use your whole body into one giant wave motion but that's a little--I mean it's close but it's a little bit off. When you're focusing on your kick, you're focusing on everything from your hips down. You're not utilizing your lower back. You're just focusing on everything from your hips down. When you look at dolphins as they swim through the water, they're not moving their whole body up and down like this as far as their middle point. They're focusing on everything from where approximately our hips would be down through their tail or the lower half of their body, not their entire body. An important aspect of your dolphin kick is to remember to keep your legs and your feet close together. You don't want to have two individual dolphin tails; you want to have one giant dolphin tail. So, an example of that would be keeping your feet, just like this, nice and close together, bending at the knees and just going up and down. The bend of your knee or your kick motion as one giant tail will be about a third of the way. You don't want to bend your--or bring your heels all the way to your bottom, but instead, you just want to bend about a third or a 30-degree angle, not a 45 and not a 90, but about a 30-degree angle to get a fast, proper, dolphin kick."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches the proper body position for the butterfly stroke: the body should be straight and face-down.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. The butterfly body and shoulder position. The butterfly body position is really quite simple. You're going to be lying down in a prone position with your body completely flat on top of the water, like this. You want to have your face, when it's in the water, looking straight down at the bottom; again, for hydrodynamic purposes. Your arm and shoulder motion are flat and square. There's really no option to turn your body or any reason to turn your body. You're just going to be flat and square as you're utilizing both of your arms, which is going to be a symmetrical, balanced stroke. During this stroke, your arm motion and your leg motion are going to keep your body completely balanced in the water, unlike, for example, your freestyle where it's one arm is turning your body one way, the other arm is turning your body the other way. None of that is necessary 'cause basically the whole purpose of butterfly is to have one strong, square, symmetrical stroke."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches some breathing exercises to help you when swimming the butterfly stroke. You must breathe every two strokes when swimming the butterfly.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Butterfly breathing. Butterfly breathing involves breathing every two strokes. We've talked about breathing every three strokes with your freestyle. We've talked about breathing every stroke with your breaststroke. In butterfly, you're breathing every two strokes, and basically this will happen during your pull portion. This is basically lifting you up out of the water, taking your breath, and going right back down. Now, a misconception that people have much like with the breaststroke is that the higher you come out, the stronger you are, which is nice; better breath you'll get, which is good, but what it ends up doing is you turn your body flat, basically you're bringing yourself to a stop. And again, the higher you come out of the water, the deeper you go into the water, and that's not what we want. With butterfly, we want to stay on top of the water, gliding through it as smoothly as possible. So when we're doing our breathing, we pull, just barely lifting our head up out of the water. We want to bring our chin about right here, about an inch off the water; if that, to get that breath and keep our head looking down. If we bring our head up during the breathing, basically it's going to compromise the rest of our body. If you lift your head up like this when you're lying flat, if I lift my head up, it's going to turn my body this way as opposed to keeping it flat and on top of the water. So, remember, just keep your head low so you can maintain the proper formation and flow of your butterfly stroke."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches how to do the butterfly stroke turns, which are an open turn like those used with the breaststroke.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Butterfly Turns: Butterfly turns are basically comprised of an open turn, much like the breaststroke, and the backstroke open turns. Basically, you'll come into the wall, arms out, stretching, leaning towards the wall. You don't want to take another mini stroke right here. You're going to take one stroke, kick into the wall. Your hands will touch both at the same time, and this is important. Both of your hands must touch the wall. You can't have a one-hand touch. If you perform a one-hand touch in a race environment, you will be disqualified so it's imperative that both hands come into the wall, your feet come underneath you, left arm down, right arm over, streamline off the wall, and dolphin kicking as far as you can go but, again, not breaking that 15-meter mark. If you dolphin kick off your turn more than 15 meters, you will be disqualified."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches how to do underwater drills, such as practicing the dolphin kick underwater without a kickboard.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Underwater Drills: One basic underwater drill that I like using for butterfly is the dolphin kick without the kickboard. Basically, it's 25-yard swims, just utilizing the dolphin kick. Arms outreached in front of me, I'll just utilize my kick to see how far I can go on one breath, and really, this is a breathing control exercise in addition to a strengthening exercise for the legs. Go as deep as you want, stay just off the bottom so you're not cracking your knees on the base of the pool, and just dolphin kicks as far as you can go. You can base your intervals on your ability and go from there."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches how to practice the butterfly stroke kick and strengthen the legs and quads by doing kicking drills with a kickboard.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Kicking Drills: Butterfly kicking drills are quite fun. You have all the opportunity to take your breath while utilizing a kickboard and just focusing on your quadriceps as that's where a lot of your kick comes from is utilizing your quadriceps. Just set up different types of distances that you wish, grab your kickboard, keeping your head above, not using your back. Again, what a lot of people end up doing is they end up using their whole body for their dolphin kick and what that does, eventually, is it'll start causing back problems. So, really focus on just using the knees and the quadriceps for your kick and basing your distance off of your ability."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches how to practice the arm motion of the butterfly stroke by using a pull buoy to do pull drills.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Butterfly Pull Drills: Basically, there's just one, as far as I'm concerned, and that's one utilizing the pool buoy. Basically, what you'll do is isolate your legs, meaning that you will not use your legs. And this is a common misconception with people. What they'll end up doing is they'll put this in their upper thighs and they'll end up kicking their knees while they're using their arms. So, when you're using the pool buoy, do not kick. I reiterate, do not kick. Basically, what this will do is provide you the opportunity to work and focus on your upper body strength, working on your catch, pull, push, and recovery. Now, during this drill, it's really quite helpful, during your recovery, to keep your arms low and close to the water. What people sometimes end up doing is, either due to arm strength or just not knowing, is they'll drag their arms through the water which, again, causes drag and resistance. So really, a good drill during this pull drill is to drag your thumbs just on top of the water. This is approximately how high you want your arms to come out of the water during this drill. And also work on bringing your arms, during the recovery, to line up just with your shoulders. Don't cross your shoulders over and don't have your shoulders too far out here as those both will slow down your stroke and slow down or reduce the distance per stroke."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, gives some breathing drills for the butterfly stroke, such as doing 15 yard sprints with no breath, which are great for aerobic conditioning and to improve the head positioning and increase lung capacity.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Breathing Drills: A butterfly breathing drill that I like to do in order to increase my aerobic activity as well as work on my head positioning are 25-yard sprints with no breath. Basically, what this helps me do is it works on my upper body, but most importantly, it reduces my level of oxygen intake to maximize my body's efficiency. So, grab a pool buoy, don't grab a pool buoy, and just work on your arms, your legs, your kick and focus on that technique. Hold your breath for the full 25 yards if you can and if you can't, work on shorter distances until you work yourself up into that 25-yard sprint. And, of course, following that, you can push it farther but only based on your ability and your personal threshold. Never try anything that you feel will actually compromise your personal safety."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches the one arm swimming drills for the butterfly stroke, which can help you improve your body positioning and balance.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. One-arm drills: A butterfly one-arm drill that I really like doing, and it also helps out as far as your body positioning and balance is concerned, is the drill in which you use right arm, the left arm, both arms. And what I like doing is applying that drill to a 75-yard or even 150-yard distances just to really maximize it. So, I'm going right arm, 25, left arm, 25, both arms, 25, right arm, 25, left arm, 25, both arms, 25. What this does is it helps focus on my upper body strength, but more importantly, really gives me an idea as to how far I'm going with each stroke per arm. So, what I might find out is I might find out that my right arm is stronger than my left. So, maybe I want to work on my left, so as a combined stroke with both arms, I'm becoming more powerful and gain more distance per stroke."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches some sprinting tips for the butterfly stroke. When sprinting in a competitive butterfly stroke swimming race, hold your breath and go as fast as possible.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Butterfly sprinting: What can be said? Basically, hold your breath and go. The butterfly sprint events include the 50 and the 100. So, it's up to 2 lengths or 4 lengths, and it's an all-or-nothing type race. Most people have enough energy to make it through that with consideration that they've worked on their technique, keeping their head low, working on their recovery position, and working on the timing as far as their kick/two-stroke ratio is concerned. Again, on a sprint race though, you're really looking to increase that turnover while trying not to compromise that technique. As far as your breathing during a sprint, it's completely optional. It's not like the breaststroke, which requires you to lift your head up out of the water every stroke. You can breathe as often as you like. It is the bottom line. In a sprint race though, like we've discussed before, the more often you lift your head and the higher you lift your head, the more resistance and drag you're going to add to your race and add to your stroke. So, if you wanted to keep your head down and fly through the 50, while--if you could maintain your efficiency during your stroke, by all means, do so."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches some Butterfly distance racing tips.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. Butterfly distance, the bone-crusher of all events: Personally, I'd rather swim a 1600 and 50-yard race, freestyle, than I would 8 lengths of butterfly. It takes an incredible amount of endurance and it takes a threshold that most people have to work a good period of time to gain. During this race, it is really important, especially if it's your first time, to pace yourself. Really work on that pull, breathe, kick, pull, breathe, kick, pull, breathe, kick. Timing is absolutely everything during the distance butterfly races. During the butterfly distance race, in order to preserve your energy and to finish a race strong, utilize your turns. Utilize your off the walls while at the same time remembering that if you break the 15-meter mark underwater that you will be disqualified."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches how to start a competitive butterfly stroke swimming race. Dive off a starting block using a flat foot start or a track start.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. The butterfly dive start is very similar to that of the breaststroke start and the freestyle start. You have your flat foot, top of the block start, or you have your track start. Your entry is the same; however, your underwater kick will be utilizing the dolphin kick. Do not go past 15 meters underwater or, again, you'll be disqualified off the start. It's really important to focus on gauging that distance, 5 or 10 yards, break the surface, start your stroke. That will really be dependent upon how strong your stroke is. If you know you're going into a race where the other racers are stronger on top of the water, then really take advantage of your turns, your off the walls, really take advantage of those. There are people who are stronger off the wall but weaker on top of the water, and vice versa. So, really, it's up to you how you are off the start."

In this video lesson, Swimming Instructor, Phillip Toriello, teaches the individual medley, which is a swimming race that involves all four competitive swimming strokes: butterfly, breaststroke, backstroke and freestyle.

Video Transcript: "PHILLIP TORIELLO: Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. The individual medley event is one of the most phenomenal races out of all swim events. Generally, if you're a butterflyer, you're going to be considered the special ops individual of your swim team for the individual medley is no joke. It is comprised of the "fly" or the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle. If you are a butterflyer, you have the upper body strength, you have the lungs, you have the lower body strength. So, doing those other strokes or performing those other strokes probably isn't a problem, more often than not. The individual medley is usually in a 100 format, 4 lengths; a 200 format where you're performing 2 lengths of each stroke; a 400 format, which is my personal favorite, since it involves all of the endurance and all of the strokes; and then also the 4 x 100 medley relay which involves four of your best swimmers on your team."