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 …

I'm the parent of a competitive breaststroker who consistently tells me breaststroke is the most technically difficult stroke. He would much rather do any other stroke in training. Not sure if that’s just because he’s not as strong at the others so can get away with less precision. Plus of course breaststroke is the slowest stroke so sets take longer 😂

There is breaststroke and then there is what DD’s swim coach used to refer to as my “holiday swimmer” breaststroke (we were friends, and I’d never had lessons).

Having watched children compete for a decade, it is fair to say that the beautiful fly strokes came from the young gymnasts (my daughter relied more on brute strength). I don’t know whether it was hypermobility but a fair few would get injuries (back or shoulder), but my observations are a fairly small sample size.

Proper breaststroke timing is tricky!

DD really struggled with breaststroke, because she is very hypermobile in her hips. I remember two swimming instructors watching her together and debating the problem - her kick wasn't constrained in the same way as other kids', and it wasn't clear how to correct it. Apparently hypermobile children often find it hard.

When she had ticks for everything she needed to move up to the next class except breaststroke, I did point out that if they were going to wait for that, she might be stuck in that class for ever.

I always found front crawl the hardest and I was a squad swimmer. Even now if I take a break it takes me a while to get back into front crawl. It's spacing the breathing and the arm movement I find tricky, then it clicks.