Welcome to the second article of our Technical Tips feature. Today we are focusing on the Breaststroke Technique of 200m Breaststroke Olympic Champion Rebecca Soni.

 

Click here to view Rebecca in action breaking the world record in the 100m Breaststroke, one year after winning her Olympic Gold Medal. As with the previous article on Alex Popov, I have listed below some basic skills, performed to a very high standard by Rebecca, which competitive swimmers of all levels can work on adding to their own stroke:

 

• Body Position. Rebecca has a high, flat body position close to the surface, minimising resistance as she moves through the water with a high body position. This is thanks to her excellent core strength. I met Rebecca 4 years ago during her first year at USC (her College Swim Team). She told me during this conversation that much of her drill work as an age grouper had focussed on body position. This was not simply stretching working on stretching into a streamlined position (although this is important), but also focused on the undulation of her body through each stroke. This would have required years of commitment in training to getting her timing exactly right, and to developing core strength, but the results were an eventual Olympic Gold Medal and World Records.
• Acceleration. I stressed in the Alex Popov article the importance of accelerating your pull in Freestyle to generate power. In Breaststroke, it is essential to achieve gradual acceleration through both the pull and the kick. You can see that after starting the outsweep of her arms slowly, Rebecca accelerates gradually until her hands push forward into the start position at full speed. A similar action occurs in the leg kick, with feet gradually increasing in speed as they push backward and move together.
• Direction of the Pull. I see many swimmers pulling their arms back too far when swimming Breaststroke. This creates alot of resistance as the arms recover forward, slowing the swimmer down. It is important that as swimmers begin the insweep that they push their hands forwards. As a rule of thumb, elbows should not pull back behind shoulders at any point in the stroke. However I see many swimmers on our Clinics who are doing this, often without realising, and are very surprised to see this on the projector screen during the analysis of their swim!

 

Those interested in learning more about how to swim fast Breaststroke can sign up for one of our forthcoming swim clinics. Details can be found on the main page of this site,www.ds-swim.com.

Keep checking back for further articles on Breaststroke and the other strokes. The next article will be coming soon - watch this space!