How many breath should take in 50m butterfly stroke?
For just 50 meters, I used to take maybe two breaths for the entire race, but that’s because my stroke was poor enough that breathing created extra effort for me, and I had great lung capacity. Of course, both the poor technique and lack of oxygen meant I’d build up a lot of muscle fatigue, lactic acid and oxygen debt, so I could never finish the deal in the 100 fly (even though I’d breathe every third stroke, usually), with the piano dropping on my back early in the last quarter of the race. If your stroke technique is pretty clean, the natural undulation of the body creates an opporunity to breath almost every stroke without much extra effort. The old rule of thumb was every other stroke cycle, but I think the key now is to work towards a more effortless stroke technique, with the exaggerated undulation, really pressing the chest down on recovery, and letting the arms kind of fall forward on the stroke, as opposed to muscling through the recovery.
