How to Swim: Advanced Butterfly

Olympic athlete Dan Kutler provides tips for improving butterfly swimming techniques.

Hi! My name is Dan Kutler and I am going to show you how to swim Advanced Butterfly Stroke. So there is probably no better creature on the planet to pattern the butterfly stroke after than the dolphin, when trying to conceive of how to advance your butterfly stroke. Picture a dolphin and notice how its midsection is the thickest part of its body and the rest of its body is shaped very aerodynamically, and all of its power seems to originate from that midsection. So when you think about improving your butterfly the first thing that I would think about is strengthening your own midsection, your core, because essentially that's where all of your power is going to originate from. The stronger your stomach muscles, upper and lower abs, your back muscles, lower back, your thighs, your glutes that entire region. The stronger that is, the more elegant your undulating motion is going to be, the easier it's going to be. And essentially that's going to dictate how easy the entire stroke is for you. Alright, so let's get a little bit more specific now. When your hands are into the water it's very important that you stretch, as far as you can with your hands and lean forward with your head-on entry. As you can see when my hands enter the water here, my head just sort of lurches forward along with my hand, boom, boom. You want to try to really reach as far you can in front of you and just lengthen your body as much as you can in order to set yourself up to grab as much water as possible. So right after the entry and after your head sort of glides forward, you want to begin the catch phase. During the catch phase it's very important especially when advancing your butterfly to bend, to keep your elbows high and let your hands drop in order to make that catch. You want bend those elbows like right here, so that you are really catching on to a lot of water, catching on to a big mass of water. I mentioned earlier about having a strong core. When your hands come underneath your body, and they pull past your hips and at the same time you are kicking downward very powerfully. So it's right here snap, boom. And those arms basically just fly out of the water. So it's this point right here that you really want to focus on, it's kind of the key to the entire butterfly stroke, it's when you right after the stretch, right after the catch it's the pull when you are pulling those arms underneath your body, pulling them past your hips and whipping those feet down. You need to think of that very quick chain of events as a snap, because the snapping you are in that transaction, the better your butterfly is going to be, and the easier it's going to be. Finally, the other sure fire way to advance your butterfly is to improve your kick. Your legs are the biggest muscles in your body, and therefore they take up the most oxygen. So if you get those in shape then the rest of your stroke is going to be much better-off. If I had a nickel for everybody you said, oh wow, that's the hardest stroke. When I told them that I swam butterfly. I wouldn't have to do this video to make a few extra bucks on the side. But when you follow these principles, strengthen your core, stretch forward with your arms and head-on the entry, begin the catch with high elbows, pull underneath your waist and kick downward simultaneously with one powerful snap, and strengthen your legs, the butterfly stroke can be surprisingly easy. There you have it. I told to master the butterfly stroke and all four strokes for that matter. Thank you for watching me and happy swimming.