Of all four competitive strokes, breaststroke is the one that humbles swimmers the most. It is the slowest stroke, the most technically demanding, and the one where small errors cost the most time. A sloppy freestyle might cost you half a second over 100m. A sloppy breaststroke can cost you three or four.
But it is also the stroke with the most room for improvement at every level. A swimmer who cleans up their pullout, tightens their stroke count, and learns to pace the back half properly can drop significant time without getting any fitter. That is a rare thing in competitive swimming.
Here is everything you need to know about racing the 100m breaststroke well, from first galas through to what the Paris 2024 Olympic final tells us about the event at the highest level.
Understanding What Makes the 100m Breaststroke Unique
The 100m breaststroke sits in a strange place tactically. It is too long to be a pure sprint, and too short to be an endurance event. What makes it particularly unusual compared to the freestyle events is that a significant portion of each length is spent not swimming at all — it is spent underwater, in the pullout phase after the start and off each turn.
This matters more than most swimmers realise. A swimmer with an excellent pullout is essentially getting free speed twice in a 100m race. That free speed costs far less energy than actual swimming, which means your pullout is not just a technical detail — it is a pacing tool.
The other thing that makes breaststroke unique is the glide. Unlike freestyle, butterfly, or backstroke, breaststroke has a built-in moment of reduced propulsion on every single stroke cycle. How you manage that glide — specifically how long you hold it and when you start your next pull — is one of the key differences between fast breaststroke and slow breaststroke.
For Younger and Beginner Swimmers: Get the Basics Right First
If you are swimming your first few galas or are still developing at age group level, the single most important thing to focus on before worrying about pacing is your stroke technique. Breaststroke rewards clean mechanics more than any other stroke, and trying to go fast with poor technique is a losing battle.
The three things every beginner breaststroke swimmer should focus on:
- Streamline position: Every stroke cycle should start and end in a tight streamline. If your hands are not together and your body is not straight at the front of each stroke, you are creating drag at the exact moment you should be at your fastest.
- Kick timing: Your kick drives you forward into the glide. It should happen at the end of your pull, not at the same time as your pull. Swimmers who kick and pull simultaneously are working against themselves — one phase cancels out the other.
- Head position: Your head should dip back down into the water as your hands go forward. Lifting your head to breathe and keeping it up kills your body position and creates massive drag. Breathe, then get your head down immediately.
On pacing at beginner level: keep it simple. Your first 50m should be controlled and technically clean. If you are breaking down technically by the 60m mark, you went out too hard. Your goal in the early stages of your breaststroke development is to finish the race looking roughly the same as you started it — same body position, same stroke timing, same kick. That is the foundation everything else is built on.
The Pullout: Where Races Are Won Before You Even Start Swimming
The underwater pullout is the most underrated part of breaststroke racing, at every level from age group to Olympic finals.
Here is how it works. After your start and after each turn, you are allowed one complete underwater breaststroke pullout before you surface. That pullout consists of a streamline, a full arm pull down to your sides, one underwater dolphin kick (this was added to the rules relatively recently and changed the event significantly), and then a recovery to bring your hands back into streamline before you surface.
Done well, this phase carries you further and faster than your first stroke above water would. Done poorly, it costs you distance and forces you to surface earlier than your competitors, which means more strokes per length, which means more energy burned.
Research on elite breaststroke swimmers has shown considerable variation in pullout length at the Olympic level. At the Paris 2024 final, China’s Qin Haiyang surfaced after 16 metres off his initial dive — the longest underwater in the field. Lucas Matzerath of Germany surfaced after just 13.1 metres. That 2.9 metre difference is essentially a free head start on every length, if the longer underwater is executed well.
For age group and club swimmers, here is a practical pullout checklist:
- Push off the wall with full force and hold a tight streamline before you start your pull
- Your dolphin kick should happen early in the pullout, while you are still carrying speed from the wall
- Pull all the way down to your thighs before recovering
- Do not surface too early — you should be aiming to get at least 10 to 12 metres off each wall at club level, working towards 13 to 15 metres as you develop
- Your pullout should feel effortless relative to your swimming — if it feels like hard work, your streamline or timing is off
Stroke Count: The Number That Tells You Everything
Stroke count is one of the most useful metrics in breaststroke coaching, and one of the most ignored by swimmers who are new to training seriously.
Your stroke count is simply how many stroke cycles you take per length. In breaststroke, unlike freestyle, your stroke count is directly tied to your efficiency. A lower stroke count generally means you are getting more distance per stroke, which means your technique is working for you rather than against you. A rising stroke count over the course of a race is one of the clearest signs that your technique is breaking down under fatigue.
Here is a useful benchmark system by level:
- Beginner age group (25m pool): 12 to 16 strokes per length is typical. If you are taking more than 16, your pullout and streamline need work.
- Developing club swimmer: 10 to 12 strokes per length is a good target. Getting under 10 requires a very strong pullout and excellent stroke mechanics.
- Competitive club to national level: Elite age group and junior national swimmers typically sit between 8 and 10 strokes per length, with strong pullouts getting them to the 10 to 12 metre mark before their first stroke.
The key thing to track in training is not just your stroke count in isolation, but how it changes between your first and second length. If your stroke count on the back half is more than two strokes higher than on the way out, your technique is breaking down in the second half of the race. That is a training target, not just a race day observation.
A practical drill: swim a 100m in training and count your strokes on every 25m. Write it down. Do it every few weeks and track the change over time. It is one of the simplest and most honest indicators of whether your breaststroke is actually improving.
Pacing the 100m Breaststroke: The Split Strategy
Like the 100m freestyle, the 100m breaststroke is almost always swum as a positive split — meaning the first 50m is faster than the second 50m. The question is how large that differential is, and whether your second 50m holds together technically or falls apart.
For club swimmers, here is a practical pacing framework:
- First 25m: This includes your start and pullout. It should be your fastest segment of the race. Controlled aggression off the start, long underwater, clean first few strokes.
- Second 25m (back half of first length): Find your rhythm. Your stroke rate should be high but your technique should be clean. This is where you settle into race pace.
- Third 25m (first 25m of return length): This is where the race gets hard. Your turn needs to be tight, your pullout needs to be strong, and your first few strokes off the wall need to hold your technique even though your lungs are burning. This is the segment that separates racers from survivors.
- Fourth 25m: Everything you have left. Focus on your kick — a strong continuous kick through the final metres is what holds your stroke together when your arms want to give up.
A reasonable split differential target for different levels: beginners, 6 to 8 seconds between first and second 50m is normal. Developing club swimmers should aim to get that under 5 seconds. Competitive club swimmers should be targeting 3 to 4 seconds. At elite international level, the best swimmers in the world are splitting within 2 to 3 seconds.
Stroke Rate vs Stroke Length: The Central Tension in Breaststroke
Here is something that most age group swimmers never think about, but that defines how every elite breaststroke swimmer approaches the event: the tension between stroke rate (how fast you cycle through each stroke) and stroke length (how far each stroke takes you).
You cannot maximise both at the same time. A faster stroke rate means less glide, which means less distance per stroke. A longer glide means more distance per stroke but a slower overall tempo. Finding the right balance for your body type, your fitness level, and your specific event is one of the most interesting coaching challenges in the sport.
What the Paris 2024 Olympic final showed us is that there is genuinely more than one way to race the 100m breaststroke well — and the data makes this fascinating.
What the Paris 2024 Olympic Final Tells Us
The men’s 100m breaststroke final in Paris produced one of the closest finishes in Olympic history. Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi won gold in 59.03, with Adam Peaty of Great Britain and Nic Fink of the United States tying for silver in 59.05 — a margin of just 0.02 seconds separating gold from silver.
What makes this final extraordinary from a coaching perspective is that the top three swimmers raced it in completely different ways and ended up within 0.02 seconds of each other.
Martinenghi (gold, 59.03) had the third-fastest split in both the opening and closing 50m, but the most consistent race of the field. He did not lead at any point by a large margin, but he did not fade either. His stroke rate averaged 55.8 cycles per minute — an extremely high tempo for a 100m race.
Peaty (silver, 59.05) has spent a decade defining what fast breaststroke looks like. His approach is built on an extremely high stroke rate — he takes a stroke approximately every 0.8 seconds, faster than almost anyone else in the world at his level. He pulls with a high body line and relies on exceptional upper body strength to generate power at that tempo. His stroke rate in Paris averaged 55.6 cycles per minute, almost identical to Martinenghi. Peaty also had the fastest reaction time off the blocks at 0.62 seconds, but notably had the slowest finish of the top swimmers, taking his last stroke 1.46 metres from the wall.
Fink (silver, 59.05) took a completely different approach. He took just 40 strokes in total — three fewer than Peaty — using a longer, more glide-based stroke that prioritised distance per cycle over tempo. He was the fastest swimmer to the initial 15 metre mark and had the strongest auxiliary time of anyone in the field, spending less than 21 seconds on his start, turns, and finish combined. His approach is closer to the traditional breaststroke model of maximising distance per stroke rather than cycling as fast as possible.
The lesson for coaches and swimmers is clear: there is no single correct way to swim the 100m breaststroke. What matters is finding the approach that matches your physical strengths and training background, and then executing it with technical precision under race pressure.
On the women’s side, South Africa’s own Tatjana Smith won gold in 1:05.28 — a performance worth celebrating locally and a reminder that South African breaststroke is genuinely competitive at the highest level in the world.
How to Train for a Better 100m Breaststroke
A few specific training approaches worth building into your programme:
- Pullout sets: 10 x pushoff and pullout only, focusing on maximum distance and tight streamline. No full strokes. This isolates the most important free-speed phase of the race.
- Stroke count sets: Swim 8 x 50m breaststroke on a moderate rest interval, counting strokes on every length and recording them. The goal is consistency — the same count on length 8 as on length 1. If it is creeping up, your technique is breaking down under fatigue.
- Descending tempo sets: Swim 4 x 25m breaststroke where each rep is slightly faster than the last. This trains your body to feel what controlled acceleration feels like in the stroke.
- Race simulation 75s: Swim 75m at full race effort, rest 15 seconds, then sprint the final 25m. This specifically trains the third and fourth 25m of the race — the segments where most swimmers fall apart.
- Kick sets: Breaststroke kick on a board, focusing on foot position (flexed, not pointed) and the snap at the end of the kick. Your kick is the engine of your breaststroke. Swimmers who neglect kick sets pay for it in the back half of every race.
A Note on Symmetry and Legality
One thing worth mentioning that coaches raise constantly at gala level: breaststroke is the most penalised stroke in competitive swimming. The rules require symmetry — both arms must move together, both legs must kick together, and your head must break the surface on every stroke cycle.
At age group level, disqualifications for breaststroke are common, usually for a scissor kick (where the legs move asymmetrically), a butterfly kick above the surface, or not touching the wall with both hands simultaneously. If your child is being disqualified regularly, it is almost always a technique issue that can be fixed, not a rules issue. Get your coach to watch the specific fault and address it in training.
Final Thoughts
Breaststroke is the stroke that rewards patience. Patient technique, patient pacing, patient development over time. The swimmers who try to muscle their way through it almost always lose to the swimmers who have put in the work to make every phase of the stroke as clean and efficient as possible.
At Vineyard Swimming we work on breaststroke technique from the earliest age group stages, because the habits you build early in breaststroke are the ones that stick. If you want to know more about how we develop breaststroke swimmers in Cape Town, get in touch at Duncan@VineyardSwimming.co.za.
About Duncan Bonney
Duncan Bonney is an ASCA Level 4 and Swim SA Level 2 certified swim coach based in Cape Town, with over 10 years of experience coaching swimmers from beginner level through to SA Nationals. He manages Vineyard Swimming and has helped multiple athletes secure overseas university swimming scholarships. Read more about Duncan Bonney, connect on LinkedIn, or follow on X.