Butterfly Drill: One-Armed Fly, The RIGHT Way

One of the most popular butterfly drills, where I come from, is the one-armed butterfly. This drill comes in a few different forms: Right arm down, left arm back. 3-3-3 drill, where a swimmer takes three strokes with his right arm, three with his left arm, and three full strokes with both arms.

But it kills me how lazy and sloppy swimmers are with their one-armed butterfly, and how many coaches let them get away with it. If this drill isn’t done properly, it gives hardly any benefit, but does lots of damage to technique.

The Drill

This is a pretty simple drill. Swimmers swim butterfly with one arm at a time, leaving their other arm straight out in front in the “number-11” or “superman” position. Aside from that, everything stays the same: Arm Angle, Breathing, Rhythm, Kick, everything.

The Purpose

This drill, when done properly, is an excellent way for swimmers to focus on their breathing, pull, recovery, and stroke rhythm, without having to struggle through muscular fatigue and tired arms. One-armed butterfly, at it’s worst, is used by tired swimmers to cut the effort on a tough butterfly set. But at it’s best, this drill can allow swimmers to really focus on proper technique and develop excellent muscle memory.

This drill is especially helpful at the beginning of a training cycle, when swimmers may not have yet built up the strength and endurance to complete an extended butterfly set.

The Trick To Doing it Properly

The trick to doing one-armed fly the right way is simple: Make sure that it looks like one-armed butterfly, and not one-armed freestyle.

These are the 3 most common ways that swimmers try to cheat this drill to make it easier:

• Arm slot- Swimmers bring their arm over top, in what basically amounts to a freestyle recovery. Remember, butterfly arms come flat out to the side, just barely over the surface of the water
• Breathing-Swimmers breathe to the side, as they would in freestyle. This takes a lot of the work out of the drill, which makes for lazy butterfly. Make sure your swimmers are simply lifting their chins as they start their pull, then diving their head back down as they move in to their recovery.
• Kick Rhythm- This drill is a great opportunity for swimmers to work on their kick rhythm. Once when the hands enter the water, once when they exit. Emphasize the force on the second kick. Avoid the temptation to fit in as many kicks as possible to rush through the drill. Butterfly is 2-kicks for every stroke, freestyle is not.

Just keep emphasizing in this drill that it’s butterfly, not freestyle, and you’ll get much better results. Otherwise, it’s not even worth doing.