Is breast stroke the hardest stroke?

[MaryTheMagical]

My ds7 is getting on pretty well in his Swim England classes, and is nearly at the end of stage 5.

He nailed backstroke early on, but his second best stroke is butterfly - and he looks like he really knows what he’s doing, it’s beautiful.

But he is stuck on breast stroke and someone told me “ohhhh they always get stuck on breast stroke, it’s tricky!”

Is that true - do most kids find butterfly easier than breast stroke?

I feel like I’ve slipped into a parallel universe where things are subtly different …

Well I’m with you OP, I think butterfly is the hardest. But it is difficult to get the leg action right in breaststroke, perhaps that’s it. My DD didn’t like breaststroke because it was ‘boring’ (perhaps translates to too slow?) so was very bad at it because she didn’t try to improve. Mind you, her butterfly wasn’t good either!

I think breaststroke is a lot easier to start off with which means that you can easily pick up bad habits. When you're being taught to do it with all the right technical stuff for racing, it's tricky - there's a lot to remember with the timing of the arms and legs, the shape of the legs, no scissor kicks, can't bring your arms too far back - if you're competing there are lots of technical things that can get you disqualified.

It is both my kids preferred stroke - butterfly on the other hand..it is painful to watch. I think shoulder rotation must have something to do with whether you can master butterfly.

Why do you want your kid to do butterfly?

You have to be somewhat competent in all four strokes to progress to the next stage if you're on the Swim England programme.

DS was a breaststroker and never really nailed fly, DD nailed fly but struggled with breaststroke. I find fly easier than breaststroke, my timing has always been slightly out (same as DD). I think it depends on the swimmer TBH.

breast stroke was harder for me. Never tried butterfly

Breaststroke is probably the most technical, and there are a lot of things that if they aren’t correct the swimmer will be DQed. With fly, it’s more a case of nailing the timing.

If you've never tried butterfly how can you say that breast stroke was harder than it?

Butterfly is generally considered much harder than breaststroke, although breaststroke is more technical initially. Fly requires much more strength, energy and coordination, you need a really strong core. I swam with several teams when I was younger and it was always much harder to find people to swim the individual fly than the individual breaststroke.

DS used to hate breaststroke. He mastered butterfly pretty quickly and achieved the 200m county time the first time he raced it! Breaststroke gradually clicked with him, but the only time he does it is in IMs. He shoots off with the butterfly and gradually slows down during the breast and back lengths, then speeds up again with the free! I must say though that 200Fly still looks incredibly painful no matter how good they are at it!

Swim parent here. Some find fly harder, some breast, and rare is the swimmer who naturally takes to both. Young kids who are good at fly seem to have an element of hypermobility in my experience (the bendy kids who are also good at gymnastics).

To be fair, breaststroke is the slowest stroke, followed by back, so that's quite normal!

Yes, but with DS it used to be to another degree! He'd go from being 1st to almost last!

I really don't understand why they need to learn butterfly. No one would ever use it for long distances, or to escape quickly from a shark. And I was definitely more likely to drown trying it than any other stroke. Completely unnecessary.

I assume you don't bother getting your DC to do any sport then because nobody needs to be able to kick a ball or swing a racquet or jump really high or do the splits. And lets not get into the total waste of time that is playing an instrument or performing in a play or painting a picture.

Just because you can't see a practical purpose for an activity doesn't mean it's worthless. And butterfly was invented as a faster version of breaststroke so perfectly reasonable to escape from a shark.

How ridiculous. Of course not. I'm every saying that if you cam swim fast enough and for a certain distance, i don't see why learning a 4th silly stroke should hold you back when you can do the others perfectly well.

Butterfly looks hard. I have tried it and failed. Once.

When learning butterfly is definitely harder but my competitive swimmer now does find breaststroke harder than butterfly as it's a very technical stroke to swim quickly and competitive breaststroke looks very different to "normal" breaststroke seen in the slow lane of the local pool.

My two are the exact opposite of each other on this. One took to breaststroke really quickly and was always strongest on that especially as it was weak for lots of others but looks like a flailing duck doing butterfly. My youngest has taken to butterfly surprisingly easily given she’s quite tiny. She can’t sustain it yet but she can go like a rocket for a short distance. Breaststroke is taking her longer and she seems to be spending a lot of time at the moment on the wall with the teacher trying to sort out feet.

It's also hardest to learn to teach.

There are basically 4 steps to breaststroke - pull (arms); breathe; kick; glide. It can be (mentally) complicated to coordinate it. Turning your knees and feet out as you kick is harder than kicking in other strokes, which is just point your toes and kick from the hip.

Some of it is just a personal thing. We all get blocks on learning things, but we don't all get the same blocks.

My daughter loves breaststroke and it was apparent from about level 5 she had a knack for it. It's faster than her fly. But I think she's a bit of an anomaly.

Butterfly is a gazillion times harder

Breaststroke is the easiest of them all

It not always the easiest to do well, though. Lots of people have screw kicks or other forms of poor technique.

Mind you, that can be true of other strokes. I was watching a bloke doing lengths of front crawl last week, and he'd probably be more efficient if his hand sliced into the water rather than slapping down with the heel of his hand.

Which strokes come more easily to you depends on your build. So some people will swim breaststroke easily and others will struggle.

I’m really amazed at the result of this poll!

Breast stroke is harder. Well I never.