How To Swim Butterfly: Body-Dolphin Butterfly

Body-Dolphin Butterfly is the next swimming drill of the learn how to swim butterfly drill progression.

In this drill, you put the arm motions learned in the Stoneskipper and Hip-Delay Butterfly drills together to execute the full butterfly stroke in one continuous motion. To avoid struggle, body dolphins are added between each arm stroke.

Swimming Drill Video

The following video shows the drill.

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Push off the wall in a prone position, with arms extended to the front, hands shoulder width apart, palms down and the head aligned with the spine.
Execute three hand-lead body dolphins.
At the end of the third body dolphin, execute a complete butterfly stroke:

Immediately catch, pull then push with the arms in the water like in the Stoneskipper drill.

Without a pause, recover the arms to the front above the water as you learned in Hip-Delay Butterfly.

After this, restart the cycle, doing three body undulations, then a butterfly stroke, and so on.

Inhale at the start of the underwater pull when the chest and head rise out of the water.
Exhale continuously in the water.

Avoid struggle. Take advantage of the body dolphins between each complete butterfly stroke motion to relax and regain balance.
Be creative in the number of body dolphins you add between each stroke. Add more to tire less fast and to have time to recover balance and undulation rhythm. Add less to make the drill more challenging and close to swimming real butterfly.
Try to keep the body close to the surface while undulating. Remember, the deeper you fall in the water, the higher you will have to climb out of the water again at the next undulation.