Butterfly Body Position: The Complete Guide

Introduction to Butterfly Body Position 

Butterfly is rightfully considered to be a powerful stroke, with a big pull and strong kicks. But swimming fast butterfly is as much about keeping resistance as low as possible as it is about power. The more level you can swim through the water, the less drag you’ll create, which means you’ll be able to swim faster for the same effort level. Swimming level requires a great body position. 

Because of the forward breathing and overwater arm recoveries, your hips have a strong tendency to sink. If your hips are sinking when your upper body is rising, you’ll be swimming through the water at an angle. That angle creates a lot of resistance. Likewise, excessively pressing your chest at the beginning of your stroke will create more resistance as well. Swimming great butterfly requires keeping everything in line at the surface of the water. 

When it comes to maintaining a great body position, your torso muscles are primarily responsible for keeping your body in line. The muscles in the front of your torso, your abdominals, and the muscles in the back of your torso, your erector spinae muscles, all work together to control the position of your spine. They ensure that it rounds and flexes as necessary. 

These muscles are also critical for ensuring that movement of your arms and legs appropriately affect your body position. If your torso muscles are doing their job, the position of your hips will influence the position of your upper body, allowing you to maintain great alignment. The same concept works in the other direction as well. By keeping your torso stable, what happens at one end of your body can positively affect what happens at the other end of your body. 

The Challenge of Butterfly 

Keeping your body level in the water to keep resistance low may seem like a simple concept, but it’s not easy to do. To recover your arms, you must lift your upper body out of the water. Because there’s no body rotation in butterfly, you also must lift your head to breathe, even if you’re breathing to the side.  

Whenever you lift your upper body, your lower body sinks, which creates more resistance as you move through the water. In contrast, the more level you are, the less resistance you’ll create and the faster you’ll go. 

Butterfly is difficult because it’s all about finding the sweet spot. If you don’t lift your upper body high enough, you won’t be able recover your arms smoothly, which makes butterfly more difficult. If you don’t lift your upper body high enough, you won’t get a clean breath, which makes butterfly impossible. To swim fast butterfly, you must lift your upper body. 

Likewise, unless you want to swim with low hips throughout your entire stroke—and you don’t want to do that—you’re going to have to press your chest in the front of your stroke after your arm recoveries. This movement will help your hips stay high. 

The challenge is learning how to control your body position as much as possible while still executing the critical skills required to swim effective butterfly. The goal is to swim with as much up-and-down movement as necessary for effective butterfly, but also with as little up-and-down motion as possible.  

The Role of Undulation in Butterfly 

The up-and-down movement of butterfly is known as undulation. Although it looks impressive when done well, it happens for an important purpose and has a direct influence on your body position. Your body position directly affects how much resistance you create as you move through the water, and that directly affects your speed. 

Why is undulation so important in butterfly? It’s because your shoulders only have so much range of motion. When you’re face-down in the water, getting both your arms behind you is hard enough, but then you also must get them out of the water behind you, which is even harder.  

In freestyle, you solve that problem by rotating your body and your shoulder up to help you bring your arm out. In butterfly, because both arms recover at the same time, you can’t rotate. You must lift your upper body out of the water, so that you can bring your arms forward smoothly. The up-and-down motion of your body allows you to recover your arms. The same applies to your breathing. Because you can’t rotate your body to the side to breathe, you must lift your head to breathe. 

Your body is like a seesaw in the water. When one side goes up, the other side goes down. To breathe and recover your arms, your lower body goes down when your upper body goes up. And to ensure that your hips come back up, your upper body presses down after your arm recovery. This up-and-down motion has the potential to cause a lot of resistance. That’s why your body position is so important. Your goal is to undulate as much as necessary to smoothly breathe and recover your arms, but not so much that you create extra resistance that slows you down. 

The Influence of Butterfly Arm Recovery 

Your arm recovery, which creates the need for the up-and-down motion, alters your body position. The way you recover your arms also has a direct impact on your body position and your ability to reduce the amount of resistance you face. 

A common issue is trying to recover your arms too low. If your arms are too low, they’ll drag through the water, which will certainly slow you down, not to mention be extremely fatiguing. By lifting your arms through your recovery, you won’t have to lift your upper body quite as much to clear the water. If you’re deliberately swinging your arms low, you may have to lift your upper body more to get your arms over the water. The more you lift your upper body, however, especially when it’s unnecessary to do so, the more you’ll create resistance. 

The opposite mistake is trying to recover your arms too high. If you’ve struggled with getting your arms over the water, you might start to exaggerate and throw your arms up high over the water. This can be problematic for two reasons.  

First, it may cause your upper body to lift even higher in the water, disrupting your body position. Second, what goes up must come down. Throwing your arms up can send them crashing down upon entry. When that happens, your upper body often follows, disrupting your alignment and creating resistance. To make matters worse, this makes it a lot more difficult to start your next pull. 

How to Breathe in Butterfly

Beyond providing you with the oxygen you need to power your racing, breathing plays a key role in optimizing your butterfly speed. There are three key skills that lead to great breathing: breathing low, breathing fast, and breathing at the right time.

• Breathing low ensures that you’re not rising too high in the water, which will negatively affect your body position. Keep your chin as low to the water as possible while still ensuring you’re taking in air and not water.
• Breathing fast ensures that your breath isn’t disrupting the rhythm of your stroke, and you’re minimizing the amount of time you spend with a compromised body position.
• Breathing at the right time helps you go faster. Start to breathe right after you set up your stroke, when you’re beginning to apply pressure to the water. To breathe as easily as possible, breathe with the rising of your shoulders, which allows your chin to clear the surface. Your shoulders begin to rise as you start to pull, so timing your breath with the beginning of your pull is important. By the time you finish your pull, your head should be up and you should be breathing.

Once you get your breath, it’s a race to get your head back down before your arms enter the water. By the time you finish your recovery, your head should be in line with the rest of your body. This minimizes the amount of resistance you create because of your body position, and will set up your arms and your body so you can move immediately into your next pull. 

Butterfly Breathing Patterns

How often you breathe influences your body position. For most butterflyers, breathing has a negative impact on body position. Because your shoulders rise a little higher during your breath and because your stroke takes longer when you breathe than when you don’t, you’ll often swim slower while breathing.  

At the same time, breathing is important because you need air to fuel your effort. It’s a tradeoff between creating speed from a technical perspective and creating speed by providing the energy you need to race. To add further nuance, the impact of breathing on your body position and speed will very much depend on your breathing skill. The better you are at breathing, the less of an impact it’ll have on your speed. 

As a result, you often see a range of breathing patterns in races. The shorter the race, the fewer breaths you should take; the longer the race, the more you’ll need to breathe.  

For races that are 50 yards/meters long, try to take as few breaths as possible. In races that are 100 yards/meters long, you’ll try to breathe every other stroke, or every third stroke. In races that are 200 yards or meters long, you’ll want to breathe every other stroke, every stroke, or breathe two strokes and then hold your breath for one stroke.  

Your ability to breathe effectively and tolerate a lack of oxygen drives these differences. There’s no right answer for you beyond choosing the strategy that allows you to go fastest. The longer the race, the more oxygen you need; the better your breathing skill, the more often you can breathe without compromising your speed. 

Butterfly Side Breathing 

Because both arms are being recovered over the water at the same time, you can’t rotate your body to breathe. You must lift your upper body out of the water. The vast majority of butterflyers breathe forward, but some turn their head to the side to breathe, whether that’s completely to the side (like in freestyle) or to an angle of about 45 degrees off center. 

Side breathing minimizes how much you must lift your head out of the water because you can rotate it to breathe. You’ll still have to lift your upper body regardless of what your head does, however, because your body cannot rotate in butterfly. 

There are two cases in which breathing to your side may be helpful:  

• If you have very poor breath timing and you’re struggling to figure out when to breathe, breathing to your side can sometimes help you figure out your timing because it’s so different.
• If you’re really struggling with the height of your upper body when you breathe, breathing to your side might be so different that it allows you to figure it out.

Common Butterfly Body Position Mistakes 

Here are some common butterfly body position mistakes you’ll want to avoid in order to swim fast and not face much resistance.  

Coming up too high out of the water during your breath and arm recovery. Come up just enough to get the job done and no more. This will help you reduce how much resistance you face. 

Exaggerating the press of your chest after the recovery of your arms. Although your chest will submerge to help your hips rise to the surface, exaggerating this motion doesn’t result in a higher hip position. All it accomplishes is creating more resistance by placing your upper body well under the surface. Just as low hips cause resistance, so too does a low chest. Again, your goal is to create just enough undulation. More than that becomes counterproductive. 

Not timing your breath correctly. As much as possible, breathe with the up-and-down motion of your body. If you breathe after your upper body rises in the water, recovering your arms becomes much more difficult. Just as important, you want to get your head back down quickly after you breathe. Incorrect timing means prolonging poor body positions, which negatively affects your speed.