The Breaststroke Has A Rich Competitive History

The breaststroke, is performed by pulling your legs up to your buttocks, turning your feet out, away from your body and then straightening out your legs. This takes concentration to be able to master. Swimming is a great way to exercise, to spend leisure time or even to pursue as a competitive sport. Whatever the reason be to take up swimming, it is essential to acquire knowledge about the various techniques involved in the many swimming strokes in order to serve the purpose at its best. There are four basic swimming strokes: the crawl swimming technique, the backstroke, the breaststroke and the butterfly stroke. This is the most popular stroke and beginners usually find it easier to learn. The technique involved is to float on one's belly in the water and to propel yourself by rotating the arms in a windmill type of motion while the legs should perform a fluttering motion. During recovery, the hands should be cupped, allowing the hand and the wrist to relax. For the leg movement, the knees should be bent slightly and the legs are kicked alternatively. Downward kicking is emphasized in this technique for maximum propulsion.

To perfect your breaststroke kicking, lie on your stomach, raise one leg and bring your foot up to your rear end. Turn your foot out and straighten your leg. This is the same motion that you will be doing in the water so you can also get the movement down and it will become second nature to you. Do this exercise on each leg one at a time, doing at least 20 repetitions on each leg at a time before you enter the water. When you do get into the water try to do several laps just practicing the kick, at this point do not worry about how fast you are going or how your breathing is working with each kick. Focus on the kick and if you are doing it correctly. The breaststroke has a rich competitive history. Its was the first stroke used in competition after the Dark Ages and all the remaining competitive strokes developed from it.

There are many recorded cases of athletes passing out from staying underwater too long in breaststroke races. The rules were changed in the late 1950s to ensure that the majority of these races would be swum on the surface. Presently, breaststroke swimmers are permitted to stay underwater only during one stroke cycle after the start and after each turn. After that, some part of the body, usually the head, must appear above the normal flat surface of the water once during each stroke cycle. Breaststroke swimmer use a shoer, sermicircular armstroke and a kick that goes by various names, although it is most commonly called a whip kick. Swimmers almost come to a complete stop when they recover the legs forward. Thus, breaststrokes must exert more force than swimmers in other strokes simply to accelerate the body back to racing speed during each stroke cycle and this makes the stroke a very rigorous one to swim.