I've been working on butterfly and the other swimming strokes for years now. What Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers applies: I need a minimum of ten thousand hours doing something to get really good at it. I might be at 1,000 for butterfly.
Unlike the natural athlete, I have to put in pool time and watch a lot of youtube (hoping for eye->-brain->-muscle memory). Last year, being the strongest man in the world wouldn't have helped me swim fly. Sometimes I could swim 25 yd without feeling totally out of breath to start right away on another 25, but I'd fail to maintain my form (if you could've called it that) and momentum on the second 25 yards. I had no idea why I was swimming well for the first 25 yards and I'm not sure I do now. I'd made baby steps seemingly forever, with little progress for completing 50 yd of fly. My stroke seemed to metamorphose lately. I now often return to drills when I can't properly swim full stroke, because Einstein was right about the definition of insanity (doing the same thing and expecting different results).
My 45-60 minute workout begins with 8-12 minutes of freestyle, many laps flutter kicking, +/-200 yd dolphin kick with a snorkel, 4-8 laps dolphin kick with arms at my side, 200 yd stone skipper drill, 200-400 yd of one arm fly and 200 yd of one arm fly mixed with full stroke. I'll toss in maybe 50-100 yd of backstroke and 100 yd of breaststroke here and there to mix it up. I dolphin kick with fast, medium and slow tempos. I want to feel myself move forward during both the flexion and extension phases of the dolphin kick. Before I swim full stroke for 25 yd I want to feel good about the timing between the dolphin kick and the pull phase during the drills. I want to time my breathing so that I've expelled maximally coming up for a breath. I want my head to rise only enough for the breath. I want my fly to have maximum forward motion with only as much vertical motion as necessary.
Less is more? Less speed helps me feel the rhythm of the stroke and know where I am when I begin the arm pull.
Having other people in the pool swimming causes less distraction now. I might watch a few people swim and think, I used to swim that badly. Then I think, do I still swim badly, but just a better badly? I swim OK, now--I know I do. I used to get in the pool and jealously wince as a better swimmer cruised through the water. Most of the time, I'm now that better swimmer. Better swimmers still abound, but I don't let them distract me from my workout.
I don't see the point of swimming freestyle for 45 minutes--it's dreadfully and fatally boring. The people who do that--what are they like?
December 16, 2017. The "Aha" moments now are little "aha"s. It has taken 'til now for me to see the benefit of letting my hips "pop" up after recovering the hands. If they pop up (or could it be forward?) they can drive my hands and chest forward. I have to be mindful of letting them pop during dolphin kicking laps and stone skipper laps. And it's so easy to neglect actively extending the hips after the recovery. All my body parts are a team. Now, if the team captain can get them to act on time, maybe it gets easier.
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