Breaststroke Body Position Drills

The best group of drills to help you focus on improving your breaststroke body position. They range from basic to more advanced so you can progress along the drills as you get more comfortable.

Ball Float

Ball float helps you learn how to feel the support of your lungs in the water. Your lungs filled with air help you float, and the more you can feel how your lungs allow you to do so, the more effectively you can manage your body position.

To perform ball float, take a big breath of air, pull your knees to your chest, and hold on. Settle into the water and pay attention to how your lungs hold you up.

Ball Float to X Float

You need to feel the support of your lungs in the water and use that support to create a great body position on the surface. Ball float to X float allows you to do that and practice maintaining your body position dynamically.

To perform this drill, take a big breath of air, pull your knees to your chest, and hold there for a moment. You should be floating with your upper back at the surface of the water. Then slowly extend your arms and legs into the letter X. Return back into the ball position and repeat.

Breaststroke With a Snorkel

Awareness is key to maintaining a great body position. One of the easiest ways to understand the impact of your breath movement is to take it away. By doing so, you can better feel what it's like to maintain a great body position and how your breath movement affects your body position when you add it back in. For swimmers who breathe too high, this can be a great drill.

To perform this drill, simply swim breaststroke with a snorkel, aiming to minimize how much you lift your head and shoulders during your stroke. If you don't have a snorkel, do multiple strokes without breathing.

Breathing Every Other Stroke

Breathing every other stroke helps swimmers become more aware of how their breath affects their body position. Experiment with different breath heights while doing this drill to determine what works best for you.

To perform this drill, swim breaststroke, breathing every other stroke, with your head and upper body remaining low on the strokes in which you don't breathe. Pay attention to whether your breath negatively affects your body position. If it does, aim to make it feel more like the strokes on which you're not breathing.

Head-Up Breaststroke

Head-up breaststroke exaggerates the negative impact of a high head position on body position. By staying in a poor body position for an extended time, the negative impact of that head position becomes more obvious. This drill is effective if you're struggling to feel whether your hips are dropping.

To perform this drill, swim breaststroke without letting your head drop. Not only should you prevent your head from dropping into the water, try to prevent it from moving at all. This will exaggerate the effect on your body position.

Alternating Head-Up Breaststroke

Alternating head-up breaststroke builds even more awareness of the impact of your breath on your body position. Swimmers can better feel the difference between a prolonged high head position and the brief high head position associated with breathing. By lowering your head every other stroke, you'll be able to feel your hips come back up on those cycles. If you can better feel your body position, you can more effectively control it.

To perform this drill, swim breaststroke while maintaining a high head position every other stroke, aiming to keep your head completely still during those strokes. When breathing normally, aim to minimize resistance when returning your head to the water.

Breaststroke With Flutter Kick

If you're struggling with too much up-and-down motion throughout your breaststroke, swimming with a flutter kick can be extremely effective. The flutter kick minimizes the up-and-down aspect of the stroke and keeps your hips level at the surface of the water.

To perform breaststroke with a flutter kick, swim breaststroke normally, but instead of doing a breaststroke kick, do a flutter kick. Maintain a strong and consistent kick to maintain a stable hip position at the surface.

Breaststroke With Dolphin Kick

During breaststroke, your hips should pop up slightly following the arm and breath recovery. If you're struggling to feel this key skill, doing breaststroke with a dolphin kick instead of a breaststroke kick after your arm recovery can help you feel how to lift your hips. Because the dolphin kick is directed down, your hips come up to the surface.

To perform this drill, swim breaststroke normally, but instead of using a breaststroke kick, use a dolphin kick. Do the dolphin kick at the end of your arm recovery.

Resisted Arm Recoveries

To help you learn to recover your arms aggressively, try adding resistance to your arms. By placing DragSox on your arms, or tying a T-shirt around your wrists, you'll make recovering your arms a lot more difficult. That encourages you to be more aggressive with your arm recoveries. Once the resistance comes off, your arm recovery speed should increase.

This drill can be done with regular breaststroke or drill. The focus is on recovering aggressively and not letting the resistance slow you down.

Breaststroke With Stroke Counts

A great indication of your ability to swim with a proper body position is the number of strokes you take. If you're creating a lot of resistance, staying long or gliding while still going fast is much more difficult. By challenging yourself to swim with different stroke counts, you'll have to learn to be more effective with your body position.

To perform this drill, start by counting your strokes and establishing a baseline. Aim to reduce that number within a set and over time, doing so by trying to slide through the water more effectively rather than trying to kick or pull harder.