In the SwimSwam Podcast dive deeper into the sport you love with insider conversations about swimming. Hosted by Coleman Hodges and Gold Medal Mel Stewart, SwimSwam welcomes both the biggest names in swimming that you already know, and rising stars that you need to get to know, as we break down the past, present, and future of aquatic sports.
We sat down with Jozsef Nagy, the breaststroke coach extraordinaire to talk about all things breaststroke. Nagy goes into detail on how the stroke has changed and what methods he thinks are best for training the stroke. One of the most interesting things Nagy brings up is the fact that in his opinion, the 100 breast world record has taken leaps and bounds in the last 20 years, while he thinks the 200 hasn’t quite matched up. The Hungarian native thinks that if athletes really focused on the event, the 200 Breast world record could be as low as 2:02 currently.
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Opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the interviewed guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the hosts, SwimSwam Partners, LLC and/or SwimSwam advertising partners.
Here is how it works. If Jozsef said it, then it is true 100% of the time. This is not a prediction, this is a challenge! Who will step up? There is room for someone to take us to 202!
I’m curious, from a US + SCY perspective, how the breast stroke has been hindered by Phelps/Lochte not having that event in their program? There is a generation of swimmers who grew up watching these two titans swimming on prime time every 4 years in freestyle (100/200/4 free relay), back (100/200) fly (100/200) and both had breast stroke serve as their weakest IM legs and wanted to ‘be like mike (-and ryan)’. Those strokes have been super competitive at the NCAA/National level for years with multiple swimmers who could have competed at a global level. Their text book huge emphasis on fast 15 yard underwaters have influenced the NCAA times.
breast stoke has kind of suffered that they haven’t had… Read more »
It suffers because it is the slowest stroke. If you can do the other strokes well why would you bother?
Honestly this is my own thought process for the stroke. I never really wanted to work on my breaststroke because I figured, “What’s the point at working hard at a stroke to get a time I could crush doing freestyle?”.
What’s the point doing freestyle to get a time you could crush doing running?
You can crush your freestyle time running in water?
Nothing wrong about that, but the same applies to IM/fly/back as well.
When comparing the current world record 100 to 200 times for each stroke as a percentage (100 time divided by the 200 time) the world records for breaststroke are in line with the other three strokes for both men and women and across the three different course (LCM, SCM, and SCY). Averaging 45-46% across all of the events with the exception of the men’s butterfly which is 44% for both LCM and SCM, and 43% for SCY; and the women’s butterfly in SCY which is 44% as well.
Therefore, maybe his comment provides evidence that the 100 breaststroke was behind the 200 and has now caught up to the rest of the events. Just food for thought.
Not sure if that says much. The ratio in men’s free is 0.460 (46.91/102). The ratio in men’s breast is 0.451 (56.88/126.12). In order for the ratio in men’s breast to be equal to the ratio in men’s free, the 200 breast world record would have to be roughly 2:03.70, which is 2.5 seconds faster than the current world record.
naaah, you breasttroke if you can breaststroke, otherwise you do not
Should be 1:59.76 with all the dolphin kicks and one hand open turns the stroke and turn judges are allowing now a days.
200 breast has not had a revolutionary talent come along Since the turn of the century for it except maybe Kitajima but I wouldn’t really classify him as someone who revolutionized the event. He just won it a lot. Barrowman in the 80s the last one. That’s why we’ve only seen incremental drops and nothing major like multiple seconds by a swimmer as we’d expect in a 200. 200 free has Thorpe, 200 fly had Mike 200 back had Piersol and the IM had Phlochte. There’s nobody like that for the breast
Kitajima definitely qualifies as revolutionary. Like Berkoff and Pankratov, he has literally redefined the rules of the sport 😉
On a more serious note, together with Hansen, they took the 200 br wr from Barrowman’s 2:10.1 to 2:07.5, which IMO definitely qualifies as a major drop.
FWIW he’s also perhaps the last guy to be awesome (as in gold medal/WR level) at both the 100 and 200 br. Mr Peaty is obviously a big reason for that, but even excluding him I think only Kamminga and Koseki were good at both? Chupkov has a decent 100, but that’s more reminiscent of Phelps in freestyle — the 200 is so god damn awesome that the 100 can’t be that bad.
Good mention of koseki. Feel like he would be the prototypical type of swimmer to hit that 2:02 mark; insane top end speed while still having the ability to swim the 200 would have to be the way to go imo.
Super suited 2:07.5. Before that he was 2:08 mid.
I think Kitajima deserves a little more credit. The WR that Barrowman broke was 2.13.34. He brought the WR down to 2.10.16, so a 3.18s improvement. Kitajima broke the 2.10.16 WR, and his fastest WR was 2.07.51, so a 2.65s improvement.
You’re forgetting Brendan Hansen lowered Kitajjma’s record of 2:09.42 down to 2:09.04, 2:08.74, then 2:08.50. All in textile suits that had bad buoyancy. Lzr helped Kitajima lower that to 2:07.5
True, but Barrowman also had an interloper in his WR progression, and all of the other revolutionaries cited by PVDH benefitted from the suits. Kitajima was only wearing lzr legs in his 207. Not arguing that he’s equal to anyone else mentioned in the comment, just that he “deserves a little more credit” than “he just won a lot.”
What about Gyurta? He won a silver medal at the olympics as a 15 year old.
2:02? That’s like 2 1:00 with some wiggle room. It’s way to fast.
2:02 could be split 59/1:03 which only Chupkov is capable of hitting on the 2nd 100 right now and he clearly doesn’t go out with a lot of speed so it’ll take a very special swimmer to get down to the 2:02 range
Copycat! 🤣 ⬆️
Chupkov split 1:02.22, 1:03:90 on his WR swim. Amazing.
https://swimswam.com/anton-chupkov-smashes-200-breast-world-record-in-206-12/
The question is could he sustain that pace with a faster 1st 100?
Proportionally it’s not really much different from Agnel going 1:43.14 and Dressel going 46.96, if you take Peaty’s standard of the 100.
Classic coach move. If u go 58 in the 100free, u add two seconds and that’s ur first 100 split. Add two more seconds for 1:02 and u should be going 2:02 in the 200free.
It’s more like 2.5
If you look at the ratio of the different 100/200 m world records, the men’s 200 breast record indeed seems “slow” (or the 100 breast record is just very fast). In order to be on par with the ratio of other strokes, the 200 breast world record would have to be somewhere between 2:03.5 and 2:04.5. If the men’s 100 breast record would be around 58 seconds, then the ratio would currently be fine. Interestingly the other event that stands out when you look at the ratios is men’s butterfly. The men’s 200 fly world record would have to be sub 1:49 to be on par with the world records in all other strokes (except for men’s breaststroke). Of course… Read more »
What is a “correct” ratio?
i run a few calcs on what i guess he meant. percentage wise the 200 wr are all between 214-217% of the 100 wr. outliers are womens 200 fly at 219%, and the mens 200 fly and breast which are both over 221%.
Or maybe the ratios differ for every stroke.
I would tend to say that the World Records are right. Kind of by their definition (the fastest ever)!
2:02 seems a bit much tbh. 59/63 (28 – 31 – 31 -31) splits? It’d take very someone special to manage that. Maybe in 30-50 years.
On the women’s side the ratio for both breastroke and butterfly is way lower (meaning that the 200 world record is faster compared to the 100 world record than on the men’s side).
What happens when you ignore that ludicrously quick 2:01 in the 200 fly?
Then you would have a much higher ratio, but you would also have to ask:
1) Why should you ignore that time (and not other times like Biedermann’s 200 free world record for example)?
2) Why is the ratio in women’s breastroke in line with the ratio in women’s free/back?
Short axis strokes are more tiring than bk/fr. It’s a lot harder to maintain technique and tempo for 200 meters.
Then you still have to ask why we don’t see the same “problem” on the women’s side.