technique. One of the key things I look for is face position where his hands and

feet are together in a straight line. It's important in breaststroke when

swimming it, that you get great distance per stroke. Brenton does a lot of

his work on stroke count, as you look here we don't want too much head

movement and the body really travels fastest just below the surface, as we

said we call this the base position.

In Breaststroke most of the power comes from a combination of the legs and the arms and

with the arms we're looking at more propellor type sweeping motions rather than

pull, push, as you have in butterfly, freestyle and backstroke.

The feet movement is predominantly backwards and together, I think 10 years

to 15 years ago it was more around and together, but now the modern

breaststroker is pushing back and together. It's very important to have

great ankle flexibility and hip and knee joint mobility.

When breathing in breaststroke we want the swimmer to move with the stroke not

to have a separate head movement. He comes up with the arm stroke catching

the water his body neck and back moves, rather than his head bobbing up

and down to take the breath. It is important to look forward when taking

this breath without too much head nodding and interference with stroke

length in front. The modern breaststroker recovers his hands close to the surface.

A number of the famous breaststrokers bring their hands out of just above

the surface at race speed, now what we're watching at the moment is fairly easy

technique but Brenton he is trying to get his hands up just in front of his

chin and keep them close to the surface as he recovers have them forward to the

full extension. At the start of the stroke the swimmer presses outwards and

some of the breaststrokers press a little bit upwards, but it is a wide

position and then it starts to catch in at that catch position is where the head

starts to come up for the breath, so the breath is a result of that beginning of

the in sweeping motion of the stroke.

This shot here shows that when the kick is completing there is an acceleration

the feet must come together, by doing this the swimmer is exacting most power

from the kicking motion. A number of swimmers we see in breaststroke cut their kick

short and do not bring the legs together. I think this causes great inefficiency.

00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:14,230 This underwater shot shows the arm stroke again once again full extension then an

outward sweep to catch the water, and then an inward sweep then forward for recovery.

This underwater shot shows how the feet

accelerate and come together and the arc of the backward motion is quite narrow.

The best breaststrokers are doing this it appears and getting a more of a

backward and together motion rather than outward and around together motion as

they were say 15-20 years ago. This shot shows full extension at the front and

also the knees trying to keep them in line with the body rather than drop

them underneath the hips. In breaststroke predominate power I believe comes from

the hip movement and once we connect with the core through our arms it is

important that this is the generating power. Looking at all good breaststrokers

I feel that you need to have your hips up near the surfaces as in these shots

showing Brenton side on.

After the initial extension their hands press outwards and catching the water

the wide position which is outside the shoulder. At that position the in sweep

begins and this is the most propulsive part of the breaststroke. When the in

sweep is occurring the head is coming up to breathe, and after the breath is taken it

is important that the swimmer recovers the hands forward because if this is a

non propulsive phase of the stroke and it's important to get the hands back and

forward to the base or frontal position. Breaststroke is one of those strokes where

I feel it's easy to do the stroke poorly but to do it correctly is extremely

difficult. When teaching breaststroke or developing an athlete to compete at

higher levels I think it's very important that we focus on doing the

stroke well, maybe doing many many drills with it rather than doing lots of it

poorly. Breast stroke can be swam by many

people poorly, but by very very few well.

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