Head Position for a Faster Butterfly

Technology can be a wonderful tool in helping swimmers swim faster. At The Race Club, we feel that there is a great opportunity to help all swimmers swim faster using new technology, the velocity meter.

Recently, National Team member and world-class butterfly swimmer, Amanda Kendall came to The Race Club for some Velocity Meter (VM) and Pressure Meter (PM) testing along with her coach Coley Stickels from Indiana Swimming and Diving. The VM measures velocity, acceleration and deceleration synchronized to video.
 
In doing her VM testing, I asked Amanda if we could make a slight change in her butterfly technique and test for the outcome. She agreed. Her normal technique while breathing was to keep the head position more or less in alignment with her upper body, resulting in very little motion in her neck. We tested her using her normal swimming technique and then asked her to extend her neck more fully for the breath and flex the neck fully to her chest after the breath, resulting in significantly more head motion. She had never actually done that before.
 
Amanda went to USA Winter Nationals swim competition and won the 100 m butterfly in a PR of 57.8, using the new swimming technique taught in this video. Comparing Amanda to Kelsi Worrell Dahlia, whom we had tested with the VM over a year earlier using a similar ‘head-in-alignment’ butterfly swimming technique, we found that with her new swimming technique, Amanda had more acceleration on the second down kick after the breath (coinciding with the head snapping down).
 
Check out more swim techniques, dryland training exercises and the leading experts in our sport in Lanes 2, 3 and 4 on our Race Club subscription:

www.theraceclub.com



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