Watch any elite swimming final. The 100m freestyle is over in a blistering 47 seconds. The 100m butterfly, a furious 50 seconds. Then the 100m breaststroke comes along, and the world record sits just under 57 seconds. That's a huge gap. It's not that breaststrokers are weaker or less trained. The stroke itself is fundamentally, physically slower. If you've ever felt like you're working twice as hard for half the speed in the pool, you're not imagining it. Let's break down exactly why.

The Physics of Drag: Breaststroke's Biggest Enemy

Swimming speed is a simple equation: propulsion minus resistance. Breaststroke loses massively on the resistance side.

Freestyle and butterfly keep the body in a relatively long, narrow, and horizontal line. The head is down, the hips high. It's like a torpedo.

Breaststroke, by its very motion, constantly breaks that line.

The Underwater Leg Catch: A Braking Maneuver

This is the subtle killer most casual explanations miss. In freestyle and butterfly, the legs move in a narrow channel behind the body. In breaststroke, during the powerful kick preparation (the "catch"), you must draw your heels up towards your buttocks and out to the sides.

Your knees bend, your thighs rotate outward. For a critical moment, your legs are no longer streamlined behind you—they are creating a massive, broad surface area perpendicular to your direction of travel. You are essentially putting out a parachute underwater. Before you even generate thrust with the kick, you've created an enormous amount of drag that instantly kills momentum.

I've coached swimmers who could feel this deceleration. They'd get a great glide from their pull, feel fast, then as soon as they started that knee bend for the kick, they'd feel the water grab them and slow them down. It's an inherent tax the stroke demands.

The Glaring Recovery Phase Problem

In other competitive strokes, the recovery phase—when limbs are moving back into position for the next propulsive phase—happens in the air. Arms swing over the water in freestyle and butterfly. There's virtually zero drag.

Breaststroke has no aerial recovery. Zero.

Both the arms and the legs recover underwater, right in the thick of the densest medium. Your arms sweep back to their starting position under your chin, and your legs snap together after the kick. These are non-propulsive movements done entirely against water resistance. You are spending energy to move your limbs backwards, which does nothing to move you forwards. In fact, it actively slows you down.

This creates a stop-start rhythm unlike any other stroke. Peak velocity happens briefly after the kick, followed by a steep deceleration during the arm pull and another during the recovery phases. You're constantly accelerating and braking.

How Rules and History Lock In the Speed Limit

It's not just physics. The official rules, governed by bodies like FINA, codify breaststroke's slowness.

The rules mandate symmetrical, simultaneous movements. Both arms must move together, both legs must kick together. You cannot roll onto your side like in freestyle to access more powerful torso rotation. You cannot alternate your kick like in crawl. This symmetry locks you into a mechanically less powerful position.

Then there's the head rule. You must break the surface of the water with part of your head on every stroke cycle. This forces an up-and-down body movement, further breaking streamline. Compare this to freestyle, where the head stays low and turns smoothly to the side.

The Dolphin Kick Controversy: A Speed Loophole (Mostly) Closed

Here's a perfect case study. Swimmers discovered that adding a powerful, hidden dolphin kick during the underwater pullout phase (after starts and turns) made them significantly faster. For a while, this "submarine breaststroke" was a wild west. Swimmers like Mike Barrowman in the 1990s used it to smash records.

FINA reacted. They didn't ban it outright but limited it to one dolphin kick followed by one breaststroke kick per pullout. They enforced the rule to preserve the stroke's traditional character and, frankly, to keep it from becoming too fast. This is a clear example of the governing body choosing to maintain the stroke's identity over maximizing its potential speed.

Side-by-Side: Stroke Mechanics Comparison

What This Means for Your Training and Racing

Understanding why breaststroke is slow changes how you should approach it. You're not trying to win a drag race. You're trying to win an efficiency contest within a high-drag environment.

Your glide is your sanctuary. It's the only time in the stroke cycle where you are truly streamlined. Work on holding that position just long enough to benefit from the momentum, but not so long that you decelerate to a crawl. It's a delicate balance.

For the pull, think "compact and forward." The old wide, sweeping pull is outdated and creates lift, not forward motion. Modern breaststroke uses a narrower, quicker insweep that directs force backwards. Get your hands back in front fast. Every millisecond your arms are moving backwards in the water during recovery is a millisecond you are slowing down.

In a race, tactics matter more. Because breaststroke is slower and more visible underwater, racers can see each other. It becomes a game of pacing, controlling the tempo, and making a move at the right time—often off the turn walls where the underwater pullout offers a speed boost.

Your Breaststroke Speed Questions Answered

So, breaststroke is the slowest stroke. It's a design feature, not a bug. Its beauty and challenge lie in mastering complexity within strict limits, in finding grace and power in a sequence of movements that physics seems to fight at every turn. The pursuit isn't to make it as fast as the others, but to make it as fast as it can possibly be on its own unique, winding path through the water.