Butterfly stroke

The butterfly, (fly for short) is a swimming stroke swum on the breast, with the arms moving synchronously. The butterfly kick was developed separately, and is also known as the Dolphin. While other styles like breaststroke, front crawl, or backstroke can be swum easily even for beginners, the butterfly requires a very good technique to be feasible. Most students consider it the most difficult style. It is also the newest swimming style swum on competitions, first swum around 1934.

History

The butterfly style evolved from breaststroke. David Armbruster, swimming coach at the University of Iowa, researched breaststroke, especially considering the problem of the increased drag due to the underwater recovery. In 1934 Armbruster refined a method to bring the arms forward over water in breaststroke. He called this style butterfly. While butterfly was difficult, it brought a great improvement in speed. One year later, in 1935, Jack Seig, a swimmer also from the University of Iowa developed a kick technique involving swimming on his side and beating his legs in unison similar to a fish tail, and modified the technique afterward to swim it face down. He called this style Dolphin fishtail kick. Armbruster and Sieg quickly found out that combining these techniques created a very fast swimming style consisting of butterfly arms with two dolphin kicks per cycle. Nowadays, the entire style is referred to as butterfly, but sometimes still also called dolphin, especially when referring to the dolphin kick.

Related Topics:
David Armbruster - University of Iowa - 1934 - 1935

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This new style was considerably faster than regular breaststroke, and using this technique Sieg swam 100 yards in 1:00.2. However the dolphin fishtail kick violated the rules of the FINA and was not allowed. Therefore, the butterfly arms with a breaststroke kick were used by a few swimmers in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin for the breaststroke competitions. In 1938, almost every breaststroke swimmer was using this butterfly style, yet this stroke was considered a variant of the breaststroke until 1952, when it was accepted as a separate style with a set of rules by the FINA. The 1956 Summer Olympics were the first Olympic games where butterfly was swum as a separate competition, swum over 100m and 200m.

Related Topics:
1936 Summer Olympics - Berlin - 1938 - 1952 - FINA - 1956 Summer Olympics

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(see History of swimming)

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