I try to think about moving my feet to my butt rather than moving my knees closer to my chest. By focusing on proper timing of your arm and leg movements and efficient leg movements, you can reduce drag in the water and conserve energy, making it easier to swim breaststroke without getting tired.
The most important thing is to avoid asymmetric leg motion. Make sure you don't open your legs too wide but keep them parallel, with your knees close. Avoid doing a scissor-kick. In the thrust phase, drive your legs back into a stretched position to propel yourself forward.
Conclusion: So to answer the main question here – Why is my Breaststroke Slow? The reason is most likely due to your kick not being efficient and when you speed up your tempo, you don't change the width of your kick.
Dropping Elbows
Lots of swimmers drop their elbows on their breaststroke pull, which significantly reduces the amount of water they're able to pull with each stroke. Instead, initiate your pull by bending at the elbows and keeping your hands in line with your forearms.
Inefficient Kicks and Pulls
Bring your heels up (without breaking the surface) quickly, flex your feet and point them outwards before pushing the water back and bringing the legs together. A few common mistakes are bending the knees up to the chest, kicking with the knees too wide, and not completing the kick.
Breaststroke is giving you the extra challenge of recovering the arms under water, and a tricky kick which makes you drop your knees and put most of your weight on the back of your buoyancy center (your lungs). This also explains why it is the slowest but also hardest stroke to master well.
Breaststroke is a much better cardiovascular workout than the other strokes. It helps strengthen heart and lungs while toning thighs, upper back, triceps, hamstrings and lower legs. It helps to work and tone the chest muscles.
Lift your head to breathe in as the arms start to come together, stretch your arms out and return your head to the water to breathe out. Breath every stroke: “Pull, Breathe, Kick, Glide”.
The Breaststroke tones the muscles in your shoulders and triceps, as well as your chest muscles. The arm movement includes an in-sweep and an out-sweep motion that build the shoulders and back.
Before swimming/competition: Try to eat a snack or meal high in complex carbohydrates with some easily digestible protein. Example: a piece of peanut butter toast. During swimming/competition: Swimmers should eat easily digestible foods that contain primarily carbohydrates.
Even when swimming hard, after a length of time in a cold pool, your core temperature will be slightly lowered. In addition, your body is expending more energy to maintain that temperature, which leads to greater fatigue than normal.
When learning the correct swim strokes, mastering a breaststroke is typically considered the hardest. It's often the stroke students struggle with most, due to movement of the arms and legs at the same time. The stroke requires both dorsiflexions of the foot, while also simultaneously using plantarflexion of the arms.
Breaststroke Timing Tips
As your elbows tuck in at the end of the pull, your heels start to draw up to your bottom, ready to start your kick as the arms extend forwards. In simple terms, the arms are in streamline while the legs kick and the legs are in streamline while the arms pull.
The breaststroke kick is hardly a natural movement and can trigger knee pain in all swimmers. Though non-specialists may be at risk due to lack of conditioning for the kick, specialists may have an even higher risk due to much greater breaststroke training volume.
The breast stroke is the slowest stroke, but also the easiest. It is one of the first strokes taught to young swimmers. This is also because you don't have to put your head underwater. To perform the breaststroke, start with you tummy facing down in the water.
Breathing. Lift your shoulder to bring your face out of the water to breathe. Don't raise your head – let the head naturally rise with the shoulders so your chin is resting just above the water. Lifting your head rather than your shoulders can lead to back pain and lowers your hips which will increase resistance.
Regardless of the reason, swimming the breaststroke with your head above water can put a significant and unnecessary strain on your neck. Imagine walking for twenty minutes with your face pointed straight up towards the sky. After your stroll, you'd have quite a neck ache!