Courtesy of Gregory S. Rotole, D.D.S. of Huntington Beach, California.

In the pool, the body dolphin – also known as the fifth stroke – is used off the turns in pool swimming for maximum speed and efficiency.

Analogously, adaptation of the body dolphin to open water and distance events permits the swimming of the other three strokes [as open water swimming is] usually limited to distance freestyle. As opposed to swimming the dolphin under the water surface as in the pool, the open water dolphin is swam above the water similar to a no-arm butterfly, but one uses a breaststroke scull – as opposed to a big pull – swimming in a sinusoidal pattern like a dolphin.

Therefore, in swimming butterfly in the open water, a swimmer can do 30 arm pulls and then rest while doing 4 to 6 body dolphins to cover 50 meters, repeating the process four times for a 200 distance. In contrast, for distance butterfly, one would only want to do like 10 pulls to 4 or 6 body dolphins simulating swimming in a 25-yard pool considering the increased difficulty, repeating the process over and over for say the distance of a mile or greater.

Now, for distance freestyle, one can use the freestyle body dolphin, which uses a flutter kick as opposed to the dolphin kick, whereby one does 20 pulls to 4 dolphins simulating swimming in a 25 yard pool, repeating the process over and over for a given distance avoiding overuse injuries. Indeed, the author used this technique wearing fins to swim Key West doing five 12.5 mile swims in a three month period utilizing 20 pulls to 10 dolphins – alternating 25 yards of each stroke – permitting maximum propulsion from the core body as apposed to one’s arms.

Although three people have swam the English Channel doing the butterfly, their technique required a major stroke modification from the 200 pool fly, which is not required with the above techniques, expanding one’s horizons for distance events (See Sylvain Estadieu on VIMEO)

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