One of the things I love about breaststroke is that you can practice it in bits and pieces. It has more cool drills than the other strokes. You can practice kicking in a dozen different ways, and it’s FUN to use fins and do body dolphin. Plus, by working on breaststroke in bits and pieces, you can exaggerate a lot of the moves you’re trying to work on. There are so many breaststroke things to do that I rarely swim whole-stroke breaststroke — at least not until several weeks before a big competition. In the base-building period, I prefer to experiment with different rhythms and not get into a rut.
I did the following practice in a 20-yard pool, but you can easily adapt it to a 25-yard pool. I was keeping in mind Dave Denniston’s rules for building an interesting practice: Never do something more than twice in a row. Also, I was focusing today on getting my hands to recover just at or above the water line.
WARMUP: 600
With fins. Swim 600, alternating 40 dolphin kick on your back and 40 free, focusing on stretching out.
MAIN SET: 1600 (I calculate that one of the tether units equals 200 yards)
Set up a swim tether and then swim twice through the following:
With tether, push off, do a pull-down, then take 25 breaststroke kicks in head-lead position and touching heels to hands, then go right into 25 hand-lead breaststroke kicks, then do a turn and swim back assisted by the tether. Do 15 recovery bobs and then repeat.
With a pull buoy, swim 200, alternating 20 freestyle pull and 20 whole-stroke breaststroke, focusing on above-water recovery of the hands.
With fins, swim 200, alternating 20 freestyle and 20 body-dolphin breaststroke, focusing on pulling the hips forward and an aabove-water recovery of the hands. Start each breast length with 4 body dolphins
MAIN SET #2: 800
10 X 40 breaststroke kick, with 7 Rocket Launchers before each 40.
Odds: Use a kickboard
Evens: Use a pull buoy and kick on your back
All: Take as few kicks as you can on the first 20; as many kicks as you can on the second 20.
With pull buoy, swim 200, alternating 20 freestyle pull and 20 whole-stroke breaststroke, same focus as in main set.
With fins, swim 200, alternating 20 freestyle and 20 body-dolphin breast. Start each breast length with 4 body dolphins.
WARMDOWN: 100
Total Yardage: 3100 (equivalent)
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