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 always preferred butterfly to breaststroke - could never coordinate breaststroke arms & legs ! We learned it fairly early at swimming club for the stamina - along with what the teacher called "Old English Backstroke" - think backstroke legs & reversed butterfly arms - great fun but not friendly to other swimmers. These days I drop into breaststroke arms/ butterfly legs and I think it's partly because we were given a chance to learn all the strokes - and to practice things like treading water for 15 minutes

My stroke of preference is that breast variation where you don’t get your face/hair wet

This is my favourite stroke for wild swimming. You can stay in cold water for much longer.

I learned to swim like this and can do it very fast.

I think this thread is split into
1)those who know anything at all about swimming - Yabu
2) those who know fuck all about swimming -yanbu

Or 3) those who know loads about competitive swimming and still think butterfly is pointless for the average swimmer - yanbu