Breaststroke
Breaststroke is a swimming style in which the swimmer is on their chest and the torso does not rotate. It is the most popular recreational style due to the swimmer's head being out of the water a large portion of the time, and that it can be swum comfortably at slow speeds. In most swimming classes, beginners learn either the breaststroke or the freestyle first. However, at the competitive level, swimming breaststroke at speed requires endurance and strength comparable to other strokes. Some people refer to breaststroke as the "frog" stroke because the arms and legs move somewhat like a frog swimming in the water. The stroke itself is the slowest of any competitive strokes and is thought to be the oldest of all swimming strokes.
Speed and ergonomics
Breaststroke is the slowest of the four official styles in competitive swimming. The fastest breaststrokers can swim about 1.70 meters per second. It is sometimes the hardest to teach to rising swimmers after butterfly due to the importance of timing and the coordination required to move the legs properly.In the breaststroke, the swimmer leans on the chest, arms breaking the surface of the water slightly, legs always underwater and the head underwater for the second half of the stroke. The kick is sometimes referred to as a "frog kick" because of the resemblance to the movement of a frog's hind legs; however, when done correctly it is more of a "whip kick" due to the whip-like motion that moves starting at the core down through the legs.
The body is often at a steep angle to the forward movement, which slows down the swimmer more than any other style. Professional breaststrokers use abdominal muscles and hips to add extra power to the kick, although most do not perfect this technique until they are more experienced. This much faster form of breaststroke is referred to as "wave-action" breaststroke and fully incorporates the whip-kick.
A special feature of competitive breaststroke is the underwater pullout. From the streamline position, one uses the arms to pull all the way down past the hips. As the arms are pulling down, one downward dolphin kick is allowed, though still optional; more than one dolphin kick will result in disqualification. This is followed by the recovery of the arms to the streamline position once more with a breaststroke kick. The pullout is also called the "pull down". The pullout at the start and after the turns contributes significantly to the swimming times. Open turns can be easily performed at the walls, but both hands must make contact with the wall. Therefore, one way to improve swimming times is to focus on the start and the turns.
Breaststroke, specifically the kick, allows you to glide underwater for much more time than any other stroke, as the kick has a lot of power and force when swimming in a pool. A competitive swimmer swimming this stroke will be underwater for a lot of the stroke due to the gliding and kicking.
History
The history of breaststroke could go back to the Stone Age, as possibly indicated by images in the Cave of the Swimmers near Wadi Sora in the southwestern part of Egypt near Libya. The leg action of the breaststroke may have originated by imitating the swimming action of frogs. Depictions of a variant of breaststroke are found in Babylonian bas-relief and Assyrian wall drawings.In 1538, Nicolas Wynman, a German professor of languages and poetry, wrote the first swimming book, Colymbetes. His goal was not to promote exercise, but rather to reduce the dangers of drowning. Nevertheless, the book contained a good, methodical approach to learning breaststroke.
In 1696, the French author and poet Melchisédech Thévenot wrote The Art of Swimming, describing a breaststroke very similar to the modern breaststroke. The book popularized this technique.
In 1774, following a series of drownings, English physician John Zehr of the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned began giving public speeches and demonstrations to teach proper swimming technique. He is said to have helped to popularize breaststroke, noting the ease with which it could be learned and swum.
In the pre-Olympic era, competitive swimming in Europe started around 1800, mostly using breaststroke. A watershed event was a swimming competition in 1844 in London, notable for the participation of some Native Americans. While the British raced using breaststroke, the Native Americans swam a variant of the front crawl. The British continued to swim only breaststroke until 1873.
Captain Matthew Webb was the first man to swim the English Channel, in 1875. He used breaststroke, swimming 21.26 miles in 21 hours and 45 minutes.
The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, were the first Olympics to feature a separate breaststroke competition, over a distance of 440 yards. These games differentiated breaststroke, backstroke, and freestyle.
1928 was the start of the scientific study of swimming by David Armbruster, coach at the University of Iowa, who filmed swimmers from underwater. One breaststroke problem Armbruster researched was that the swimmer was slowed down significantly while bringing the arms forward underwater. In 1934 Armbruster refined a method to bring the arms forward over water in breaststroke. While this "butterfly" technique was difficult, it brought a great improvement in speed. A year later, in 1935, Jack Sieg, a swimmer also from the University of Iowa, developed a technique involving swimming on his side and beating his legs in unison similar to a fish tail, and modified the technique afterward to swim it face down. Armbruster and Sieg combined these techniques into a variant of the breaststroke called butterfly, with the two kicks per cycle being called dolphin fishtail kick. Using this technique, Sieg swam 100 yards in 1:00.2. However, even though this technique was much faster than regular breaststroke, the dolphin fishtail kick violated the rules. Butterfly arms with a breaststroke kick were used by a few swimmers in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin for the breaststroke competitions. In 1938, almost every breaststroke swimmer was using this butterfly style, yet this stroke was considered a variant of the breaststroke until 1952, when it was accepted as a separate style with its own set of rules.
In the early 1950s, another modification was developed for breaststroke. Breaking the water surface increases drag, reducing speed; swimming underwater increases speed. This led to a controversy at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, when six swimmers were disqualified, as they repeatedly swam long distances underwater. However, a Japanese swimmer, Masaru Furukawa, circumvented the rule by not surfacing at all after the start, but swimming as much of the length underwater as possible before breaking the surface. He swam all but 5 m underwater for the first three 50 m lengths, and also swam half underwater for the last length, winning the gold medal. The adoption of this technique led to many swimmers suffering from oxygen starvation and even to some swimmers passing out during the race, so a new rule was introduced by the FINA, limiting the distance that can be swum underwater after the start and after every turn, and requiring the head to break the surface every cycle.
Since then, the development of breaststroke has gone hand-in-hand with the FINA rules. In about the mid-1960s, the rules changed to prevent the arm stroke from going beyond the hip line, except during the first stroke after the start and after each turn. Before 1987, the head had to be kept above the water surface during the entire stroke. Later on, swimmers were also allowed to break the water with parts of the body other than the head. This led to a variant of the stroke in which the arms are brought together as usual under the body after the pull but then are thrown forward over the water from under the chin until the arms are completely extended. There was a controversy at the 2004 Summer Olympics at Athens after Japan's Kosuke Kitajima won the gold medal in the 100 m breaststroke race over American Brendan Hansen, the world-record-holder. Video from underwater cameras showed Kitajima using a dolphin kick at the start and at some of the turns. Officials claimed that these kicks were not visible from above the surface of the water, so the result stood. In July 2005, FINA announced a change of rules to allow one dolphin kick at the start and at each turn, the new rule took effect on 21 September 2005.
Techniques
The breaststroke starts with the fly high butterfly lying in the water face down, arms extended straight forward and legs extended straight to the back.Arm movement
There are three steps to the arm movement: outsweep, insweep, and recovery. The movement starts with the outsweep. From the streamline position, the palms turn out and the hands separate to slightly past shoulder width. The outsweep is followed by the insweep, where the hands point down and push the water backwards. The elbows stay in the horizontal plane through the shoulders. The hands push back until approximately the vertical plane through the shoulders. At the end of the insweep the hands come together with facing palms in front of the chest and the elbows are at the side at the body. In the recovery phase, the hands are moved forward again into the initial position under water. The entire arm stroke starts slowly, increases speed to the peak arm movement speed in the insweep phase, and slows down again during recovery. The goal is to produce maximum thrust during the insweep phase, and minimum drag during the recovery phase. Another variant is the underwater pull-down, similar to the push phase of a butterfly stroke. This stroke continues the insweep phase and pushes the hands all the way to the back to the sides of the hip. This greatly increases the push from one stroke, but also makes recovery more difficult. This style is well suited for underwater swimming. However, FINA allows this stroke only for the first stroke after the start and each turn. In late 2005, FINA has also introduced a new rule which permits a single downward kick after the push off the wall.As a variant, it is possible to recover the arms over water. This reduces drag, but requires more power. Almost all competitive swimmers use this variant in competition.