Time seemingly dilates when I'm doing breaststroke!

Breaststroke for me was the easiest stroke to learn and it is the hardest one for me to perfect. At all times during the stroke one faces a preponderance of resistance whether you're pulling your legs inward to produce a kick or thrusting your arms forward into a glide, it is simply a constant negotiation with 100's-of-pounds worth of liquid in front of you.

To clarify, in freestyle you develop your momentum and you simply maintain it. Same with butterfly and back but breaststroke becomes an exercise in creating new momentum with every kick and every pull. The trick is what can you accomplish during the glide if you are strong enough to produce a powerful glide.

When I am sprinting a 50 breast and I am in the throes of kicking and then lunging forward, I am convinced that it's taking me 2-minutes to get across the pool but when the clock says something like 36.00-or-so when I touch the wall, I am astonished that I wasn't a 1/2 hour slower because that is how long it feels.

I have a new pull and I think I can produce a time in lower 30's now come SCY season. At least I hope so.

Photo brought to you by patries71 photostream on Flickr: [Link]

Breaststroke side by side comparison - look at the momentum graph!

Swimming is all about not losing momentum:

Comparison of two swimmers side by side doing a breastroke pullout. The performance times for each swimmer is as follows; For the 100 yard breastroke, the swimmer on the left goes 1:00.8 and swimmer on the right goes :57.8. Even though both swimmers have vastly different performance times, the tracing demonstrates that at least for this part of the lap, identical techniques. Arrows at key positions appear in this video to demonstrate the similarities through this phase. With practice, by gliding less from the initial push-off from the wall, the zero velocity artifact can be eliminated.

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