So what is better, out of all these styles? Well, depending on your goals and your flexibility, even your breathing pattern and fly. They all have their pros and cons. So, a chin surfer, as I said earlier, doesn’t use their undulation to their maximum capacity, so they need to have a great kick. Sometimes they’re hypermobile so sometimes their legs are hypermobile too, just because they have less undulation as well, but you’re kind of like, specifically, born, a bit of a chin surfer, especially if you have a natural ability at Dolphin Kicking. High raiser with your eyes up, doesn’t require as much work from the legs, but they do have to work on snapping the head down fast and consistently to keep a solid body line through the races. As I said before the goal of Butterfly, no matter how you’re swimming fly is to avoid that snowplow position. So as you come up higher and higher and at the end of the 200 Fly, it’s going to get harder and harder to drop, head down. So your goal is to make sure that you train that comes to the point that that happens is prolonged and then when it does happen or you know that it’s happening, you can do something to try to correct it you don’t stay in that position. Whereas you look at a high raiser with their eyes facing down, this is my favorite way of swimming Butterfly because it keeps your body in good alignment, especially the upper neck. It also allows younger swimmers, if you’re an age group coach, to still learn the benefits of undulating so you’re not putting them at really flat, you’re, you’re keeping them up and down, learning how to move the body and kind of create that body roll without having them do too much with their head or their eyes.
