What's going on swim fans! Welcome to a special
Whiteboard Wednesday in today's video I'm gonna break down Adam Peaty's world-class breaststroke
technique I've got race footage right here I'm gonna walk you guys through it as I see it
I'm gonna draw an analysis on his pull kick timing underwater pullouts and by the end
of the video I'm going to share some drills from his own Instagram account and other
YouTube videos sharing how exactly he's training and how he's able to swim so fast the goal is by
the end of the video that you can pick up on some of these tips and tricks so you can apply them
to your own swimming so you can swim faster and smarter than ever before now if you guys are new
to the channel welcome to my swim pro where we share the latest and greatest to help you improve
your performance and health both in and out of the water if you guys are new to the channel make sure
you subscribe if you like this content and let me know in the comments which swimmers you'd like
to see me analyze next and without further ado let's begin when we take a look at Adam Peaty's
breaststroke it's simply a work of art his strokes are very clean especially when you look at them
at a slower pace like this when he's going at full speed it can be really choppy when we look at it
in slow motion we can start to analyze some things the first that i want to highlight is timing
in breaststroke it's all about pull kick glide it's as simple as that you can't rush it and you
have to start and finish every single stroke in streamline so when we look at Adam Peaty's
stroke he does exactly that this is in real speed right now and as you can see he starts and
finishes every single stroke in streamline even if it's just for a little bit every single stroke
you have to be riding high on top of the water and if you don't finish and hold streamline
for even just a little bit you're not really going to maximize your kick and when you swim
breaststroke i want you to think in your head pull kick glide and you can see he's doing that very
clearly here the shorter the distance of the race the less you're going to hold that streamline
but it's really really important to hold it now the second thing I want you guys to pay attention
to is the pull he plays to his corners very very well and I'm going to zoom in here just so you
guys can see exactly what I'm talking about when we're talking about corners we're talking about
the way he's grabbing the water pushing out with the pinkies pushing out just past the shoulders
if we draw some lines adjust how wide we're going you're not really going that far out maybe 10
o'clock and 2 o'clock if you use the arms of a clock and the goal here is to try and initiate
that high elbow catch as early as possible so that way you're catching water from your fingertips
all the way through into your armpit actually and if you watch in slow motion let's put it at half
speed you can see how he's engaged with the water all the way through at every point of the pull
and a big mistake swimmers make is when they're taking the pull right here and the arms are about
to return back to streamline you kind of drop the elbows and if you take a look at his stroke
he is really leveraging and pulling the water behind him at every single moment i'm going
to draw that again so you guys can see maybe with some angles you can see how he's really
just pulling the water back at every element and once the hands come back together and the thumbs
are at the nose he has an insane drive forward and just explodes and the reason for that is because
when you're taking the breath let's zoom out here actually we're going to go back just a little
bit when you're taking the breath that is the slowest part of the stroke so you want to make it
as fast as possible and you want to minimize the amount of resistance there now the second thing
i want to highlight is how narrow his kick is we're going to go ahead and zoom in again and
if you take a look at the kick you can see how far apart the knees are the knees don't really
go that far apart if you actually take a look at Cody miller in the lane next to him his kick is
actually a lot wider by comparison and the reason why you don't want to have a super wide kick is
you want to try and keep your body in a narrow body line and if you open up your legs too much
you're going to create way too much resistance and that's no good you want to swim like in a box
well not that kind of a box I'll show you guys in a different angle let's zoom in here and
you can see ah perfect so we're returning to a neutral body position if we look at the width
of the kick specifically let's zoom in here this looks a little wider actually he's not
wearing a tech suit but as you can see the width of the legs are a little bit wider and you want
to keep your heels tucked inside of your frame if you think about the frame how much water are you
actually displacing because water is 800 times more resistive than air and so if you displace
too much water it's going to slow you down the juice isn't worth the squeeze so it's better
that you actually minimize the size of your kick and make sure that your heels actually come up
all the way to your butt into you know your heels driving your butt use your hamstrings get a really
strong kick there it is wow very very efficient okay let's skip ahead now to watching his kick
here yeah you can see the kick is very compact and there's a moment right here where the feet
are flexed and the toes are actually pointing to the outside walls and the displacement is
relatively small and that's the goal that is what you want now let's take a look at the
pull out i think there's some things that we can actually look to improve in Adam Petey's
pull out let's watch it in slow motion here off the wall now if you notice immediately his
streamline could be improved i don't know if you guys caught that let's go ahead and zoom or
rewind a little bit obviously you want to be able to displace as little water as possible and i see
some gaps in Adam Peaty's streamline now I get it this is for a video but if you notice he's not
really the best off the walls off the start you know work he's a bulky guy he's strong but working
on his streamline might be a way to improve his you know it's pull out to start and turn
and that's a huge part when you're trying to go you know world record pace every second
every tenth of a second hundredth of a second matters now let's go ahead and clear the
screen I'm gonna play it in slow motion and you can see when you bring your hands in there
is a little bit of resistance here that i notice if we have the line body line is pretty
good if anything his eyes might be looking too far down too far behind him if you think about
it if we draw a line in your body position you really he should be looking at 90 degrees right
now it looks like he's about maybe 70 degrees so we don't want that we want to be a little bit
more efficient but one thing i wanted you guys to notice if you notice where his hands are there's
a gap right there do you guys see that that's his body line his hands are here he could easily be
displacing less water instead of here he could be displacing more if he kept his hands a little bit
closer to each other if you guys are new beginner swimmers just remember that a pullout is only
allowed when you push off the wall or off the dive you get one underwater dolphin kick one underwater
pull and you have to bring your hands back up so it's really important that you maintain a very
very narrow body position so that way you don't create a lot of resistance i think there's another
angle coming up yep right here that's the pull good streamline now let's take a look at another
angle there it is all right so same thing here body line really good his head is actually tucked
down a little bit too much his eyes he's looking too far down and then as a result his head's a
little bit lower than it needs to be another area to look at where his hands are so his arms could
be a little bit tighter where that red line is and so when we look at this in motion if you guys
see right here he did a really good job keeping his elbows in the elbows tend to pop up pop out
of the body line on the pull out and he's doing a good job keeping his body in a nice tight frame
but his arms in terms of depth are definitely you know he's coming away from his body let's
watch the turn here again in slow motion again streamline can be a little tighter there's the
gap that we saw between his hands and his body still really good you know we aspire to be at this
level and then you can see that gap right there that is a lot of body displacement that he's
making in the water and if you can get that you know maybe 30 percent lower maybe it'll improve
his pullouts to start and be able to carry more momentum off the wall and off the diving block
here's another example 26 in the 50 long course at the end of a workout here let's zoom in a little
bit you can see exactly how the race is unfolding and his body is so high in the water I'm going
to pause it just so you can get an appreciation when he gets to streamline you can see his
entire backside on top of the water which means his legs now if you do this right his legs and
his his whole body is just very high in the water if we could see this underwater you know
his legs would be very close to the surface his upper body is pretty much just hovering on top
of the water and he's able to return that head position he's looking down he's not looking
forward if he was looking forward his legs would be way deep underneath the water and that's
not what he's doing let's keep watching the race can you imagine going 26 in practice in anything
i mean freestyle that's going really fast he's doing it in breaststroke absolutely incredible
for reference i go 30 seconds in the long course in a race he's going you know he's blowing me
away right here amazing now let's look at some drills this is a drill with the parachute not the
parachute the core the stretch cord it works on tempo hand speed that's a great drill to just get
your hands moving and really train above race pace and the only way you can do this is with some kind
of resistance assistance so basically someone's pulling you in or the bungee cord is there to help
you out here's another drill that works on hand speed because again you know it's difficult to
get above race pace if you're not using equipment and this is a pool that actually has a current in
it so you swim in the same spot but the current actually allows you to mimic above race pace for
a short period of time or at least as long as you can hold it together and Adam Peaty's right here
is putting in the work who knows what the pace on this was maybe it's 25 seconds per 50 meters and
it looks like that's probably what it is because you can only hold it for 10 or 15 strokes
so amazing here is another you know at race pace training you see the green line on the bottom
that's moving that was set i believe at 26 or 25.5 per 50. it's pulling away from him and right
now his tempo slowing down not holding it here's another fun drill i believe he's got with
paddles he's gonna work on the underwater pullouts good streamline pull down maintain that position
you can see his elbows start to pop out a little bit actually we talked about this and you want
to make sure you're maintaining your streamline because if your elbows pop out it's just going
to create more resistance and that's not going to help you swim faster i'll see what the next the
next drill is a good lung control as well you know the 100 breath stroke or 200 breaths strike
your lungs feel like they're going to explode at the end of the race if you've done it you know
exactly what I'm talking about and it looks like he's going full 50 meters here underwater uh not
too shabby for the world's best breaststroker here's a great dry land activity you're working
on core stability i mentioned he's so high in the water that doesn't happen on accident guys guys
and gals he's able to maintain that body position by having a strong core planks are a great way to
do it this is a little bit more advanced movement and this one one of my favorites all about
explosiveness here we go doing a push-up plyometric if you want to have fast twitch muscle
activation you've got to train to do that okay so don't start you know with this kind of a push-up
variation work your way up if you guys are looking for more dry land training make sure you check
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