How to Swim Breaststroke: Tips for Faster, Better Technique

How to swim breaststroke: pull your hands out and in beneath your chest, breathe as your shoulders rise, shoot your arms forward while snapping a frog kick behind you, then hold a streamlined glide until you slow down. Pull, breathe, kick, glide — in that order, every stroke.

Breaststroke is the stroke most Singaporeans learn first and the stroke most swim badly for the rest of their lives. It looks gentle, so people assume it is easy. In truth it is the most timing-dependent of the four competitive strokes. Get the sequence wrong and you will fight the water on every cycle, no matter how strong you are.

What follows is how we actually teach it in the pool: the mechanics, the timing, the faults we correct week after week, and the drills that fix them.

The Breaststroke Cycle in Four Beats

Every breaststroke cycle contains exactly one pull, one breath, one kick and one glide. The order never changes. Say it to yourself as you swim.

1. Pull. From a streamlined position, sweep your hands outward until they are a little wider than your shoulders, turn the palms and scoop inward and slightly back until they meet under your chin. Elbows stay high and in front of you. The pull is small — your hands never travel past your shoulders.
2. Breathe. The inward scoop lifts your shoulders naturally. Let your head come up with them and take the breath there. You do not lift your head; the pull lifts it for you.
3. Kick. As your hands shoot forward, draw your heels toward your seat, turn your feet outward, and whip them around and together. Your head drops back into the water as the arms extend.
4. Glide. Arms straight, legs together, body long and flat. Hold it. This is where breaststroke is won.

The single most useful cue in breaststroke: your hands and feet should never be pulling at the same time. When the arms work, the legs are still. When the legs work, the arms are extending. Overlap the two and you cancel yourself out.

The Frog Kick, Done Properly

Roughly three-quarters of a breaststroker’s propulsion comes from the legs, which is why a weak or incorrect kick caps everything else. Two faults dominate.

The knees come forward. If your knees drive toward your chest, your thighs turn into a parachute. Instead, keep your knees roughly hip-width and draw your heels to your bottom while the thighs stay relatively still. The recovery should be narrow and quiet.

The feet do not turn out. Breaststroke propulsion comes from the insides of the feet and shins pressing back against the water. If the toes stay pointed, there is nothing to press with. Flex your ankles and turn the toes outward before the whip. This is the single hardest thing to teach adults, and it is largely a matter of ankle flexibility.

A quick self-test: sit on the pool edge with your legs in the water and try to point your toes outward while keeping your knees together. If you cannot get much rotation, add ankle mobility work on land. It will do more for your kick than any amount of swimming.

Where the Speed Actually Comes From

Beginners try to swim a faster breaststroke by taking more strokes. It rarely works. Breaststroke is the slowest stroke and the one with the most drag, so speed is found by removing resistance, not by adding effort.

Count your strokes across a 25m length. Then try to cover the same distance in two fewer strokes without slowing down. Most swimmers can, immediately, simply by holding the glide half a second longer. That is free speed, and it is available to you today.

Breathing Without Wrecking Your Position

Breaststroke breathing goes wrong when swimmers treat it as a separate action. Lift the head deliberately and your hips drop, your legs sink, and the next kick starts from a broken position.

The fix is to breathe through the stroke rather than pausing for it. As your hands scoop inward, your chest presses down slightly and your shoulders rise. Your mouth clears the water for a fraction of a second. Take the air there and let your face fall forward again as the arms extend. Look down and slightly forward, never straight ahead. Your chin should almost graze the surface, not float above it.

Exhale steadily underwater through the nose and mouth. Beginners who hold their breath arrive at the surface needing to blow out and breathe in during the same instant, which is why they feel rushed and out of air by the third length.

Five Faults We Correct Every Week

• Pulling too wide and too deep. The hands sweep past the shoulders and the swimmer stalls. Keep the pull in front of you and finish it under the chin.
• Kicking and pulling together. The classic beginner error. Insert a deliberate pause: arms straight, then kick.
• No glide at all. Stroke blurs into stroke. The swimmer works hard and travels slowly.
• Head permanently up. Common in swimmers who learned to breaststroke socially and never put their face in. It sinks the hips and strains the neck.
• A scissor kick. One leg whips, one leg trails. Often invisible to the swimmer. Ask someone to watch from behind, or film a length on a phone.

That last point deserves emphasis. Breaststroke faults are almost impossible to feel and obvious to see. One length filmed from the pool deck will teach you more than a month of guessing.

Drills That Actually Fix Things

1. Two kicks, one pull. Forces a long glide and exposes rushed timing. If you cannot hold the streamline for the second kick, your glide was never there.
2. Kick on your back, arms at your sides. You can see your knees. If they break the surface, they are coming too far forward.
3. Pull with a buoy, no kick. Isolates the arms and stops you hiding a weak pull behind a strong kick.
4. Three strokes underwater. The pullout position teaches genuine streamline. Do not overdo it — never practise breath-holding alone or to the point of discomfort.
5. Stroke counting. Not glamorous, but the fastest route to efficiency.

A Word on Knees

Breaststroke is the one stroke that can genuinely aggravate a knee. The whip kick places rotational load on the joint, and a wide, forceful kick with poor ankle mobility concentrates that load badly. If you feel pain on the inside of the knee, narrow your kick, work on ankle flexibility, and reduce breaststroke volume while you sort the technique out. Pain in breaststroke is information, not something to push through. Swimmers with existing knee issues are usually better served by freestyle and backstroke, and should speak to a physiotherapist before building breaststroke volume.

How Long Until It Feels Right?

An adult beginner with reasonable water confidence can usually hold a recognisable, comfortable breaststroke within six to eight lessons. Making it efficient takes longer, because timing is a habit and habits are slow to rebuild. Swimmers who have breaststroked incorrectly for twenty years often need more sessions than complete beginners — there is more to unlearn.

Progress is not linear. Expect a plateau around the point where the stroke starts feeling natural but the speed has not arrived. That is normally a glide problem, and it is normally fixed in one lesson by someone watching from the side.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you swim breaststroke correctly?

Follow the sequence pull, breathe, kick, glide. Pull your hands in a small circle under your chest, take your breath as your shoulders rise, then shoot your arms forward as you snap the frog kick, and hold a streamlined glide before starting the next stroke. Arms and legs must never work at the same time.

Why is my breaststroke so slow?

Usually because the glide is missing or the timing overlaps. Try counting strokes per length and reducing the count by two while keeping the same speed. Nine times out of ten the swimmer is working hard and travelling slowly because there is no streamline between strokes.

Is breaststroke or freestyle harder to learn?

Breaststroke is easier to survive and harder to master. Beginners can move through the water with the head up almost immediately, which is why it feels approachable. Freestyle demands breathing technique from the start but its timing is far more forgiving. Many coaches teach basic freestyle technique alongside breaststroke for this reason.

Why do my knees hurt after breaststroke?

Most often a kick that is too wide, combined with limited ankle flexibility, which transfers rotational stress to the knee. Narrow the kick, flex and turn out the ankles, and reduce volume. Persistent pain warrants a physiotherapist rather than more lengths.

How many strokes should breaststroke take per 25m?

There is no universal number — it depends on height, technique and pool. What matters is the trend. Track your own count over weeks; a falling stroke count at a constant speed means your efficiency is genuinely improving.

Can adults still learn breaststroke properly?

Yes, and often faster than children, because adults can understand and apply a timing cue immediately. What adults lack is the willingness to swim slowly while rebuilding a habit. Give it that, and the stroke comes.

Getting a Second Pair of Eyes

Breaststroke rewards coaching more than any other stroke, precisely because its errors are invisible from the inside. A single session with someone watching your kick from behind will usually surface a fault you have carried for years. Governing bodies such as Sport Singapore and instructor-training bodies like AUSTSWIM place stroke observation at the heart of instructor certification for exactly this reason.

We coach breaststroke one-to-one across Singapore, at public pools and at residents’ own condominium pools. If you are stuck, book a private swimming lesson, explore condo swimming lessons at your own block, or find a pool near you. Beginners who are still building water confidence should start with learning to float before worrying about stroke mechanics at all.