How to Swim Butterfly: Should a Class Teach It at All?
Butterfly is the last stroke a swimming class teaches, and for most adult swimmers it is optional. It will not make you fitter than freestyle, it will not make you faster, and it carries the highest injury cost of the four strokes. What it will do is teach body undulation, timing and rhythm, and it makes every other stroke feel easy afterwards. Learn it as a drill, three to six strokes at a time. Do not learn it as a distance stroke, and do not learn it at all if your shoulder already hurts.
Two corrections before anything else, because both errors are everywhere.
Do not lift your head to breathe. The chin skims the surface, low and forward. The instant the head rises, the hips drop and you are swimming uphill.
Do not keep your legs straight. The dolphin kick is a wave that starts at the chest and travels through the hips to the feet. The knees bend as the wave passes through them. A rigid leg produces no propulsion at all.
Build It From the Kick
Butterfly is a kicking stroke with an arm recovery attached. Learn the dolphin kick until you can cross a pool with it.
Press the sternum gently down. Let the movement travel through the hips and let the legs follow like the end of a whip. Feet together. The knees bend only as a result of the wave, never as its driver.
Practise three ways, a length of each: on your front with arms extended, on your back with arms at your sides, and on your side with one arm extended. The side kick is the one that teaches you where the power lives.
Spend a month here. There is no butterfly available to a swimmer whose dolphin kick does not move them.
Then the Timing
One arm cycle, two kicks.
- Kick one as the hands enter in front of you. This drives the hips up and sets the body line. It is the kick everybody forgets, and forgetting it is why the front half of the stroke sinks.
- The pull. Hands sweep out, in towards the navel, then back past the hips.
- Kick two as the hands exit at the thighs. This launches the recovery.
- Recovery. Arms sweep low and wide over the surface, relaxed, little fingers up.
Drill it as single-arm butterfly — one arm stroking, the other extended in front, full dolphin timing underneath. Twelve lengths of that teaches more than a hundred lengths of thrashing.
Then Breathing
Breathe low and forward, chin skimming, as the arms sweep past the hips. Face back in before the arms come round. Head down, then hands past.
Breathe every second stroke while learning. Every stroke is fine too, and is what most adults settle on.
The Order Matters
| Stage | Practise | Move on when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Dolphin kick | Front, back, side; no arms | You cross the pool without a board |
| 2. Timing | Single-arm butterfly, both sides | Two kicks arrive without thinking |
| 3. Arms | 3 strokes, then rest; build to 6 | Six strokes stay smooth |
| 4. Breathing | Low chin, every second stroke | Head goes down before arms come round |
| 5. Distance | 25m, never more at first | Whenever it stops being ugly |
Never swim butterfly tired. It is the one stroke where fatigue produces technique so poor it is worth stopping mid-length.
Common Mistakes
- Learning the arms first. The universal error. Build from the kick.
- One kick per cycle. The entry kick vanishes and the front of the stroke sinks with it.
- Lifting the head to breathe. Chin skims. Hips stay up.
- Straight legs, or kicking from the knee. The wave starts at the chest.
- A high, straight-arm recovery. Low, wide, relaxed. High recoveries wreck shoulders.
- Swimming lengths of it. Three to six strokes, then rest.
- Swimming it with a sore shoulder. Do not. See a physiotherapist.
Safety
Butterfly is the hardest stroke on the shoulders and the lower back. Overuse injuries build quietly and arrive all at once.
Keep the recovery low and relaxed. Stop at the first twinge. If your lower back aches after butterfly, your hips are dropping — a technique fault, not a core-strength one, and no amount of sit-ups will fix it.
Never practise underwater dolphin kick as breath-holding work. Prolonged or repeated breath-holding, particularly after hyperventilating, causes shallow-water blackout: a silent, warningless loss of consciousness that has drowned strong swimmers in supervised pools. Surface and breathe. It is never a contest.
Swim where a lifeguard is on duty. Butterfly is exhausting and fatigue arrives faster than you expect.
Children should not be pushed into butterfly volume. A few strokes in a lesson is plenty, and their shoulders are no more durable than yours.
Who Should Skip It
Anyone with a shoulder that hurts in freestyle. Anyone who cannot yet swim a comfortable freestyle length. Anyone swimming purely for fitness, who will get more from an extra interval set.
Everybody else can enjoy it as a drill: three strokes at the start of a warm-up, once a week, purely to remember what rhythm feels like.
If you are still building a first stroke, begin with freestyle for beginners. Adults learning a new stroke progress far faster with somebody watching from the deck — through private swimming lessons or structured group swimming classes. Serious swimmers usually first attempt butterfly properly in a masters squad, where somebody will stop them doing it badly. Practise between sessions where you can — see learning in a condominium pool.
Pool timings and programmes are published by ActiveSG.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be strong to swim butterfly?
Less than you think. Timing and undulation carry the stroke. Strong swimmers with bad timing exhaust themselves in ten metres.
How many kicks per arm cycle?
Two. One as the hands enter, one as they exit. Beginners omit the first.
Should I lift my head to breathe?
No. The chin skims forward, low. Lifting the head drops the hips.
Should my legs be straight?
No. The knees bend as the wave passes through. Rigid legs produce nothing.
Why does my lower back hurt?
Your hips are dropping, usually because you are lifting your head. If it persists, see a physiotherapist.
Is butterfly worth learning?
As a drill, for most fitness swimmers. It improves everything else. It is also the fastest way to hurt a shoulder if rushed.
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