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By Dan Beard
How to Make the Breast Stroke
Bring your hands together under your chin with the Palms down, fingers straight, close together, and pointing in the direction you are about to move. Next shove the two hands straight out in front of you, keeping your thumbs touching. As your hands are pushed forward kick backward with your legs, as previously described. When the knees are straight the legs will be spread wide apart (see dotted lines above Fig. 248). Bring them together and, if you time this properly, your position will now be that of an arrow, the point being your extended hands.
In this pose you will shoot through the water some distance, and not until your speed begins to slacken perceptibly must you sweep your hands to the right and to the left with the palms slightly hollowed, and bearing down hard enough to force the head sufficiently above the water for you to breathe through your nose without taking in water. When your stroke is finished, bring the hands back to the same position they first occupied under the chin.
Practice this stroke without the kick, if the latter bothers you, until you learn it. Then practice the two together, and when you succeed in doing this you will be surprised to find that you can get along better without the aid of the old wooden "swimming master" that with it.
Do not abandon your friendly rope, however, until you have gone back and forth in the semicircle it describes a sufficient number of times to assure yourself that its support is no longer needed.
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