For Butterfly and Breaststroke: Use Your Head

Some of the fastest breaststrokers and butterflyers don’t just lay their heads down into the water softly after the breath, they snap them down quickly and aggressively into the streamlined position.

At The Race Club we have always preached to our campers to try to swim smarter. Not that there is any way to swim fast easily, but one can also improve time tremendously by focusing on the minute details of technique, by thinking about the right way to swim, rather than simply doing what might feel correct. When it comes to breaststroke and butterfly, in addition to using your brain for developing the fastest way to kick and pull, one can also benefit from the head in another way.

The adult human head weighs about 12 pounds and over all has negative buoyancy (the brain has neutral buoyancy but the skull has negative buoyancy).