A BRIEF HISTORY

Breaststroke is both the oldest stroke and the newest one. Depictions of people swimming the breaststroke dating back thousands of years have been found on rock drawings, friezes, and pottery throughout the world.

This is the stroke sixteenth-century French author François Rabelais had his giants, Gargantua and Pantagruel, swim as part of their daily physical training program. And when he wasn’t fomenting revolution, offering folksy advice, or flying his kite in the rain, it was the stroke utilized by Benjamin Franklin, one of the top swimmers of his day, in his frequent aquatic forays across the Thames.

Few people today realize that when Matthew Webb became the first person to conquer the English Channel in 1875, he used the breaststroke. The overarm stroke, which was just making its way into European consciousness, was deemed inelegant and certainly not suitable for proper gentlemen and ladies. In the past seventy years, however, only one swimmer, a German, has used the breaststroke to swim the channel. Of all the competitive strokes, it is both the least efficient and the slowest. When swum correctly, though, it can be surprisingly fast.

Since the breast and the butterfly became distinct strokes in the mid-1950s, the breaststroke has undergone more change by far than any other stroke. The past thirty years have seen coaches emphasize a wide variety of styles of arm pull, recovery, leg kick, head and body position, and timing.

Should the arm pull be wide, long, and narrow, or short and resemble a sculling motion? During the arm recovery, should the palms face outward, inward, or upward in a prayerlike position? Should the kick be wide or narrow? Should the body ride high or low in the water? Can the head dip below the surface of the water or not? Should the body remain flat throughout the stroke, or should it undulate in a dolphinlike movement? At what point should the swimmer breathe? When in the stroke cycle should she kick? In recent years, sophisticated biomechanical studies have answered many of these questions definitively. In other cases, technique still seems to be a matter of individual choice. This chapter will present the most up-to-date thinking on how to swim the breaststroke efficiently, indicating where variations appear to remain a matter of choice or comfort.

To complicate matters, top competitors have achieved success in the breaststroke using two basic styles—the conventional, American-style breaststroke and the undulating or dolphin breaststroke. In the late 1980s, still another style—the wave-action breaststroke—was developed by Hungarian coach Jozsef Nagy.

In addition, there have been a number of successful variations on the two basic styles. This is not the case with the other strokes. For example, the leg kick is more important in breast than in the other strokes, so some swimmers with especially strong legs emphasize the sweeping action of the breaststroke kick, known as the whip kick. Other swimmers rely more on a powerful arm stroke. To find the style with which you are most comfortable will require some experimentation.

All the successful variations, however, are based on a general style that was first used in the early 1960s. The man credited with creating the modern breaststroke is Indiana University’s Chet Jastremski, coached by the legendary Doc Counsilman. In 1961 Jastremski introduced a radical new style, which featured a rapid, continuous turnover of the arms. He also changed the kick forever, doing away with the wide frog kick and substituting a narrower whip kick. This eliminated the glide that had previously characterized the breaststroke.

The results of these changes were electrifying. Jastremski became the first swimmer to crack the one-minute barrier for the 100-yard breaststroke. At the national championships that summer, he devastated the world records in the stroke, slicing four seconds from the 100-meter mark and carving over seven seconds off the 200-meter standard. By the 1964 Olympics, however, the rest of the world had caught up to Jastremski, and he was only able to win the bronze medal in the 200-meter event.

Although the breaststroke can be swum successfully using a variety of styles, this chapter will emphasize the basic principles that apply to effective swimming of the stroke no matter which variation you employ. As you learn the breaststroke, try to incorporate these principles into the style you adopt.