Coaches' Corner

Video Analysis for Butterfly: Arm-Leg Timing

Coordinating the arm and leg actions is one of the greatest challenges when learning butterfly. Mistiming of the second kick is one of the most common errors for swimmers learning the stroke.

Here is a selection of butterfly video clips taken at the Margarita Island swim camp in January 2011. There is a short freeze frame for each swimmer taken at the completion of the down stroke in the second kick. The second kick is the one that occurs as the hands exit the water.

As you can see, all of these swimmers are, to varying degrees, completing their second kick before completing the arm pull.  Ideally, the completion of the second kick and the completion of the pull coincide, leaving the entire body in a straight line from head to toes just before the hands exit the water.

When the kick finishes early the arms must drag the entire body forward and up for the arm recovery, resulting in greater arm and shoulder fatigue.  If you replay the video you should be able to see the legs being dragged, especially in the cases where the kick finishes early in the pull.

When analyzing video of the butterfly stroke for timing it can be useful to look at freeze frames at four points in the stroke, corresponding to the top and bottom of the downbeat of the each of the two kicks, and compare these with like pictures of accomplished butterfly swimmers.

Four frames from a video of Michael Phelps.

Looking at the right bottom image one can see his hands which are just passing his swim suit as the downbeat of his second kick completes.  The lower left image shows the arm position at the beginning  of the downbeat of the second kick.

Four frames from a video of Ryan Lochte.

The lower two images show the top and bottom of  Ryan Lochte's second kick, his hands exited the water one frame earlier.  Again, the kick starts the downbeat when the arms are at chest level.

Here are two frames from the video illustrating the kick finishing early in the pull instead of the end.

We haven't suggested particular approaches to correcting these timing issues, and there are other stroke issues to consider, but that will be another article!

Posted at 10:45PM Feb 08, 2011 by Lindsay in Butterfly  |  Comments[0]