Use of Tempo Trainer for fly?

[Danny]

In a recent thread, the subject of stroke counting in fly came up. In freestyle, I have found that stroke counting is more effective when used together with a tempo trainer. Any thoughts on this? What would be a slow or fast stroke rate for fly? In freestyle, a slow rate is between 1.5-1.7 s per stroke. What would that correspond to for fly?

[CharlesCouturier]

Originally Posted by Danny

In a recent thread, the subject of stroke counting in fly came up. In freestyle, I have found that stroke counting is more effective when used together with a tempo trainer. Any thoughts on this? What would be a slow or fast stroke rate for fly? In freestyle, a slow rate is between 1.5-1.7 s per stroke. What would that correspond to for fly?

I've used the Tempo Trainer to assist me with Fly training, I can not live without it now. I find it very motivating.

For me, a slowish rate would be anything in between 40-50 (half cycles per minute) and when I sprint a flat out 50m (if race fit), I break the 100 half cycles per minute. Michael Phelps is holding around 85-90 half cycles per minute.

Give this a go, but beware. Once you get used to it, it's very addictive. Better bring a spare battery just in case ;-)

[kueli]

Hi Charles,
A million thanks for your long report in the NAD Forum. I will get back to you on this when I find the time. What is a half-cycle? Or rather, how many seconds per stroke
is fast, medium, and slow? Thanks! I am off to the pool to fly :-))

[CharlesCouturier]

For me, every time I issue a kick, a half cycle just occurred. In a full cycle, there are generally 2 kicks, the first and the second.

A slowish rate for this drill might be 44 strokes per minute (as set in TT-Pro, mode 3), or in your terms, 1.3636

On such a rate, you favor the glide feeling etc. I don't think I've managed to go above 80spm at top speed, ie 0.75

That said, my optimal sprint rate full stroke was monitored at 112 spm (.54) so maybe I just didn't try hard enough or fast enough boosting up the rate at pure NAD

There's one caveat though. As you slow down the rate, normally, both kicks shouldn't followed a steady pattern. Normally, it is desired to wait a bit after the 1st kick, which means that the second will be followed shortly after by the 1st. I've found this to not be a big issue with training on tempo, although logically it's a good thing to swim without and let the natural flow developing itself too.

[CoachGaryF]

I prefer to keep the tempo trainer set for a full fly stroke per beep, using mode 1 which is seconds per cycle (a stroke and a stroke cycle are the same thing for fly.) To swim a true rhythmic fly similar to what you'd see a competitive swimmer perform, stick in the 1:10 to 1:30 range. That's a range of 45-55 strokes per minute, approximately. Tempos slower than that tend to create the "traveling" butterfly stroke, with a deep and exaggerated front end that is rhythmically closer to breaststroke. I would match the single beep per stroke to your landing in the front (arms, head, chest land forward essentially together.) Of course it would be helpful to know a little about your swimming background, age, purpose for learning fly (to race? just to pull it off gracefully?) to suggest the most appropriate tempo range for you. Freestyle tempos in the 1.6 and 1.7 range are REALLY slow, by the way, roughly half the tempo of elite distance swimmers. I like to keep my masters swimmers/triathletes in the 1:1-1.3 range for the bulk of their swimming, occasionally going slower to isolate and correct certain stroke issues. I also want them to learn to swim with control at tempos of :80-1.1, which is your ticket to the dance if you want to be competitive. My high school kids typically race the 500 free at tempos ranging from :65 to :85. You shouldn't be afraid of higher tempos (tempo or rate is, after all, one half of the V = D x R equation), but you should work up to them in a systematic way that doesn't sacrifice clean mechanics.

[Superfly]

I would agree that you want to keep the tempo in the 1.1 to 1.3 second/stroke range for fast fly, but slower tempo for working on technique and building stamina. I go even further and divide the full stroke into 4 so I end up setting the metronome to 0.3 seconds (for a 1.2 second/stroke rate) for fast fly, or 0.4 seconds for building stamina. The reason for this is to ensure that I'm swimming rhythmically and kicking evenly both down and up. One beep matches a down kick, followed by another beep for an up kick, and so on. 4 beats equal a full stroke.

Note that the beeps can become grating after a while, so that's why I now use an underwater iPod Shuffle. The key is to pick songs that have matching BPM (Beats Per Minute). For example, the Rollings Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown" is 190 BPM so that works out to 0.32 second/beat which is fast fly.

I have song playlists that progressively increase the tempo with each new song. It works well for me, although I sometimes feel that Butterfly is a cruel mistress. But then I feel wonderful after the great workout.