How to Stop Sinking During Breaststroke: Techniques, Drills, and Common Mistakes

How to stop sinking during breaststroke?

To stop sinking during breaststroke, focus on maintaining a streamlined body position with elevated hips, optimizing your kick for propulsion rather than drag, coordinating your arm pull for lift, and synchronizing your breath to minimize disruptive head movement, all culminating in an effective glide phase.

Understanding the Physics of Sinking

Sinking during breaststroke is primarily a battle against gravity and inefficient hydrodynamics. Your goal in swimming is to create lift and propulsion while minimizing drag. When you sink, it's often due to a breakdown in one or more of these principles: your body position creates excessive drag, your propulsive forces aren't strong enough, or your lift is insufficient to counteract gravity. Addressing this requires a precise understanding of biomechanics and a refined technique.

Core Causes of Sinking in Breaststroke

To effectively prevent sinking, we must first identify its common culprits:

• Poor Body Position: The most frequent cause. If your hips drop, your body creates a "V" shape, significantly increasing frontal drag and making it harder to stay afloat. This is often linked to head position.
• Inefficient Kick: A "bicycle" kick, or one where the knees drop too far, generates more drag than propulsion. The breaststroke kick (whip kick) needs to be powerful and directed backward, not downwards.
• Weak or Incorrect Arm Pull: If your hands and forearms aren't catching enough water or are pulling downwards instead of backward, you won't generate sufficient lift and forward momentum.
• Breathing Technique: Lifting the head too high or too early to breathe can cause the hips to drop dramatically, disrupting your horizontal alignment.
• Lack of Core Engagement: A weak core allows the body to sag in the middle, compromising the rigid, streamlined platform needed for efficient swimming.
• Rushing the Stroke (Lack of Glide): Without a proper glide phase, you lose momentum and the opportunity to recover in a streamlined position, making it harder to stay on the surface.

Essential Techniques to Prevent Sinking

Addressing these issues requires a systematic approach to your breaststroke technique.

Optimizing Body Position and Streamlining

Your body should be as flat and horizontal as possible, like a torpedo, just beneath the surface of the water.

• Head Position: Keep your head in line with your spine. When breathing, lift only enough to clear your mouth, then return your face to the water, looking downwards or slightly forward. Avoid lifting your chin too high. This helps keep your hips high.
• Hip Elevation: Actively press your chest slightly downwards into the water. This counter-intuitive action, combined with core engagement, naturally brings your hips higher towards the surface. Imagine a string pulling your hips up.
• Full Extension: At the end of each stroke cycle, ensure your arms are fully extended forward and your legs are together and straight behind you. This creates the longest, most streamlined shape possible, allowing you to glide effectively.

Mastering the Breaststroke Kick (Whip Kick)

The breaststroke kick is crucial for propulsion and lift.

• Recovery Phase: Bring your heels towards your glutes, keeping your knees relatively close together and tucked behind your hips, not dropping beneath them. Avoid excessive knee drop.
• Catch Phase: Rotate your feet outwards (dorsiflexion and eversion) so your soles and inner shins are facing the water you're about to push.
• Propulsion Phase: Drive your feet backward and slightly together in a powerful, sweeping motion, like a frog. Focus on pushing water directly backward, not downwards. Finish with your legs fully extended and together.
• Ankle Flexibility: Good ankle flexibility is paramount for an effective catch. Work on ankle mobility drills if needed.

Refining the Arm Pull

Your arm pull provides both propulsion and lift, especially during the crucial breathing phase.

• Catch Phase: From the extended glide, sweep your hands outwards and slightly downwards, creating a wide "Y" shape. Your fingertips should point downwards, and your elbows should remain high ("high elbow catch").
• Inward Scull: Sweep your hands inward and slightly backward, keeping your elbows high and driving the water backward. This is the primary propulsive phase and helps lift your upper body for breathing.
• Recovery: As your hands meet under your chest, quickly shoot them forward into the streamlined glide position. Minimize resistance during recovery.

Synchronizing Breathing

Proper breathing is key to maintaining a stable body position.

• Timing: Breathe as your hands begin their inward scull. This is when your upper body is naturally elevated.
• Minimal Head Lift: Lift only your mouth out of the water. Avoid lifting your entire head and shoulders. Keep your chin tucked.
• Exhale Underwater: Fully exhale underwater before you lift to breathe. This prepares your lungs for a fresh intake of air and prevents you from holding your breath, which can make you feel heavier.

The Importance of Timing and the Glide

Breaststroke is a cyclical stroke with distinct phases that must be coordinated for efficiency.

• Pull-Breathe-Kick-Glide: This rhythm is fundamental.
  1. Pull: Arms sweep outwards and inwards.
  2. Breathe: As arms scull inward, lift to breathe.
  3. Kick: As arms recover forward, initiate the kick.
  4. Glide: Extend fully, arms forward, legs together, and hold this streamlined position to maximize momentum. This glide phase is critical for maintaining speed and staying on the surface. Rushing it leads to sinking.
• Momentum: The glide allows you to ride the momentum generated by your kick and pull, reducing the effort needed to stay afloat between strokes.

Engaging Your Core

A strong, engaged core acts as the bridge between your upper and lower body, crucial for stability and efficient power transfer.

• Hollow Body Position: Think about tightening your abdominal muscles to prevent your lower back from arching and your hips from dropping. This creates a "hollow" or slightly rounded lower back position that helps elevate the hips.
• Stability: A stable core allows your arms and legs to apply force effectively against the water without your body wobbling or sinking.

Drills for Improvement

Incorporate these drills into your training to isolate and improve problem areas.

• Push-Off Glides: Push off the wall, extend fully, and hold a streamlined position (arms overhead, ears between biceps, legs together) for as long as possible. Focus on hip height.
• Kickboard with Head Down: Use a kickboard but keep your face in the water, only lifting to breathe briefly. Focus purely on the kick's propulsion and keeping your hips high.
• Single Arm Breaststroke: Practice breaststroke with one arm extended forward and the other performing the pull. This helps isolate arm mechanics and balance.
• Sculling Drills: Practice just the arm sculling motion (hands only, then with pull buoy) to feel the water catch and lift.
• Breaststroke with Fins: Fins can provide extra propulsion, allowing you to focus on body position and arm timing without worrying as much about sinking.
• Underwater Breaststroke: Practice the full stroke underwater for a few cycles. This forces you to focus on a powerful kick and glide, as there's less surface tension to fight.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Looking Forward Excessively: This will inevitably drop your hips.
• Cycling the Legs: The breaststroke kick is a whip, not a bicycle pedal.
• "Dropping the Anchor": Letting your knees drop too far below your hips during the kick recovery.
• Shortening the Glide: Rushing into the next pull before fully extending and gliding.
• Pulling Downwards: Using your arms to push water down instead of backward.

By systematically addressing these technical elements with focused drills and consistent practice, you will develop a more efficient breaststroke that maintains a higher, more propulsive position in the water, effectively stopping the frustrating sensation of sinking.