Hip Movement When Swimming the Butterfly Stroke
How undulation helps you swim butterfly
Butterfly is a highly hip-driven stroke that harnesses the strength of the core to propel you forward. To master this movement, you must work on undulating your hips in time with your arm pulls.
That undulating movement also allows you to get your head clear of the water for each breath, which is super important; a steady stream of oxygen is 100% necessary for fast swimming.
How to Undulate
Undulation starts with the head and moves down in a wave-like action. It accesses the core, back, hip and strong leg muscles as it moves through and culminates in a foot flick at the end of the kick. It’s a smooth, seamless motion that in time will feel fluid and strong as it recruits all the major muscle groups from your neck to your ankles to help provide forward propulsion.
Undulating properly puts you in a better physical position to get your head out of the water for a breath, and it’s important to note that the amplitude, or height, of your undulation will vary between breathing and non-breathing strokes.
When you breathe, you're going to come up higher than when you don't breathe. The higher you come up out of the water, the more energy you're going to expend and the more drag you'll have on your body as your hips and legs inevitably drop a bit as a counter balance to the elevated head, neck and shoulders of the breathing cycle. That slight loss of forward momentum is worth it to grab a good breath and the oxygen that will power additional speed in the next stroke.
On the other hand, when you’re not breathing, you can channel some of that core strength into a little extra forward motion. When you undulate, you want to spend your energy moving forward and not up and down. The more energy you spend going up, the less energy you have to get to the wall. This means that on non-breathing strokes, you should focus on powering forward rather than up and down within the undulation movement.
Learning to undulate efficiently is the key to unlocking strength and speed in the butterfly stroke. Keep practicing and you’ll eventually find the sweet spot between up and down and forward undulation to keep you powering through stroke after stroke of strong butterfly swimming.
