To think that learning to swim butterfly is pointless?

[Justajot]

Watching my DD's swimming lesson, I finally realised that no one ever needs to be able to swim bufferfly. Breaststroke is good for ploughing up and down, front crawl is good for going faster and back crawl is lovely and chilled, each has a role. But butterfly is there just to be awkward. I've only ever seen one adult swim butterfly at a public pool and they were so slow they might as well have been going backwards. Why do children still dutifully learn butterfly?

I was in the pool the other day sedately breaststroking along the main non-laned bit with a posse of old ladies when a man leaped into the pool and started butterflying madly up and down. He had to be collared by the lifeguard and told to either chill out or get in the actual lanes, he clearly couldn't see where he was going and kept zigzagging across the rest of us, sending us old ladies flying in his splashy wake

So YABU, people need to be taught not to do that at least!!

When we moved to Aus I was asked if my kids were competent swimmers, I said yes. So, the woman continued, they can do 50 meters of the four main stokes. On asking she clarified that the four main strokes were freestyle (front crawl), breast stroke, back stroke and butterfly. I said they can do the first three but not butterfly, they were marked as "remedial level swimmers" 😂😂😂

My conspiracy theory is that it's included in kids swimming lessons so they take years instead of months/weeks to learn to swim, racking up £££

This is my theory as well! Swimming lesson grades seem designed to keep you going as long as possible (rather than to teach the basics as quickly as possible).

Miljah, I was volunteering in Vanuatu, a nation of less than 300 000 people with more than 200 languages. I'd go back again in a heartbeat. 😍

The adults I know that are able to do Butterfly are all, many years later, in far better physical condition than those who, like me, specialise in Doggy Paddle with the occasional foray into a half arsed crawl, breaststroke or languid slip into backstroke. They're also far more likely to be able to do the easy and graceful dive off the side into the pool.

Might be coincidental, but seeing as I only learned to not sink and a drown from a friend when I was 15, as the couple of half terms of lessons before water and teachers' strike put paid to any chance of ever swimming competently, I'm very aware of the differences when looking at others to see how the strokes are supposed to be done.

Dts have been stuck in stage five for an age as they just cannot get the technique right. It's incredibly frustrating. I don't think they have strength / coordination for it yet and most of the rest of the smaller kids seem to be the same.

I'm a swimmer and swim butterfly, used to do IM but I was teenage before I could do it well.

I always told my dds to never perfect butterfly otherwise you are stuck doing it for the school or club. I agree OP its a silly stroke

*My conspiracy theory is that it's included in kids swimming lessons so they take years instead of months/weeks to learn to swim, racking up £££

This is my theory as well! Swimming lesson grades seem designed to keep you going as long as possible (rather than to teach the basics as quickly as possible).*

I agree completely. My son can’t do butterfly so can’t complete stage 4. I only want him to be able to swim for lifesaving/fun. He’s never going to be a club swimmer.

If only there were different lessons - ones for those who just want to learn to swim and those who want to do competitions. Or at least, a clear divide between the two, so you could finish “basic swimming “ and then progress to “advanced swimming” instead of them all being mixed up together wasting time and holding children back.

Here’s the link to the stupid swim awards: www.swimming.org/learntoswim/asa-learn-to-swim-awards-1-7/

I think that ‘being able to swim’ should be swim any stroke for 25m. Everything else is just polish which should come later.

It should never be necessary to swim 10m butterfly before you can progress.

It's a fantastic stroke and impressive to watch. Fab for core stability and practising dolphin kick under water.

My ds is a competitive swimmer. His best stroke after free is fly.

He'd ban breast stroke if he could because due to having HSP and dodgy hips he can't do it. He does fly legs and breast arms (and keeps up ).

RandomlyChosenName , I think this about staged swimming lessons too. DS8 went to staged lessons from being little, never managed to learn to swim (mainly walked across the pool). We gave up for a long while. He's been to 4 lessons with an independent swim school and within lesson two he was swimming unaided, by lesson 4 he's got the basics of frontcrawl, backstroke and breaststroke, can swim unaided and out of his depth and is loving it.

Butterfly is the stroke that put my kids off swimming and put fear in them when they both swallowed water and got into trouble whilst doing it (a few years apart). I'm sure they aren't the only kids that have given up lessons and seeing swimming as a fun activity because of that stroke. I'd like to see it removed from the learning syllabus.

I completely agree OP. I was a competitive swimmer in my teens and learn to swim fly at around 12. My 6 yo DD is being taught fly in her swimming lessons - completely bloody pointless. Fly is not a life skill, it can wait until kids go to club swimming imho.

@Trewser completely agree! I always got stuck doing butterfly races at school sports day just because I could do 2 lengths of it without drowning. Hated it and much preferred backstroke/crawl for racing but other people could do those...

I've swimming lesson fly is not of club standard fly. They really don't expect it in perfect co ordination. Just to be able to dolphin kick and put arms over your head!

Swimming fly was actually really good for my DS as it gave him load of confidence as not many people can do it and it helped him get talent spotted at his school.lessons for a competitive swim club. However in the main it is an absolutely useless stroke and it's silly to teach it to kids who havent even mastered freestyle yet.

I was a good swimmer in my early teens. I loved butterfly. It felt so different. I still can swim other strokes fine but not butterfly it takes a lot of effort and power. Probably could if I practiced but it's not for a busy pool!

Depends on what your aims are for the swimming lesson. Do you want her to just be able to swim for general fitness/safety if anything were to happen? Or do you want her to reach a more competitive level? She'll need to know butterly if you want her to compete well.

I say this as an ex competitive swimmer who went to the nationals.

Depends whether you are swimming for safety (in which case butterfly is overkill) or swimming for fitness. In which case butterfly is a good stroke for muscles that the other strokes don't touch (abdomen in particular).

In any case, it's nice to have it as a tool in your repertoire ... my preferred stroke is breaststroke, but in lane swimming when you're passing someone in the next lane the kicky bit can be a little antisocial and dangerous, so it's nice to be able to switch to butterfly legs (which go nicely with breaststroke arms).

I also got lumped with it at school competitions .... came 4th in the borough 4 years running.

Competitive swimmers all need to swim fly. Swimming lessons are the starting point for a sport, not just getting out of a river if you fall in. You don’t know, when they start out, if they are going to be competitive swimmers or not- we certainly would not have predicted that DS would turn out to be a swimmer! So they all learn it, as part of a rounded swimming curriculum.

Done correctly, fly is a beautiful stoke: full of power and grace. Fly swimmers have amazing core strength. I love watching the younger swimmers completing their first fly races too, as it reminds me how far they all come with perseverance and hard work.

As with all sports, not everything comes easily, the tricky parts are as important as the easy ones.

All sports are pointless if looked at from the perspective of usefulness

Apart from swimming!

No, swimming is equally as useful as lots of other sports, as many have said above doggy paddle works fine for most swimming survival situations (anything where it doesn't you should have a life-jacket some other sort of flotation device anyway) The strokes are there because they are faster / more efficient etc.

You need to develop strength to get you our of all sorts of situations - pulling yourself out of the water you've fallen in for example - strength sports do that.

You need to develop the balance and co-ordination to not fall in the water in the first place, Agility/Balance/Coordination sports will do that.

Gymnastics is great for ABC and strength, but it's terrible for safety, if you have to jump from too high to be safe, you don't want to land with your feet together and your arms stretched out with a big fixed smile on your face. You want to roll out to make the landing safer, are you doing gymnastics 'cos it's a fun sport, or for safety when you need it?

Sports adjust the demands to make it fun, and provide rules that can demonstrate the skill - butterfly is fun to do, dolphin kick I think is useful in very shallow water, but mostly it's 'cos that's the sport.

If you buy lessons from the Sport association, don't be surprised that they teach the sport, obviously that is what they want to do - build their sport.

He'd ban breast stroke if he could because due to having HSP and dodgy hips he can't do it.

One of my daughters swims competitively. She’s great at butterfly but hates breaststroke the most. She reckons she can’t get her kick to go right .

The difference between being able to swim for safety/pleasure and for competition is interesting. We're definitely in the first camp. My DD has a wide variety of hobbies and wouldn't be willing to forego those for multiple swimming sessions each week.

At what stage should swimming lessons diverge? I'd like her to continue to have lessons until she is good at the other 3 strokes and the I'd happily pay for her to do some sort of fun swimming sessions.

"Teaching butterfly is a scam and doggy paddle is the best stroke for most people to learn" - only on mumsnet!

Why bother with the discipline to learn anything properly? Equations? Algorithims? Who needs them unless you're going to have the potential to have a well paid job in STEM after all?