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As mentioned, swimming is the most technical of all the disciplines we coach and of all the individual strokes Butterfly (Fly) is the one that's hardest for novice swimmers to time correctly. The reason for this is that Fly is undulating, but unlike breaststroke the undulations aren't led by the movement of your arms.
Instead, the head leads the stroke into and out of the undulations and the legs and arms are used to drive the head out of the water in order to breathe. Take a look at the following sequence:
In the first slide this Olympic swimmers hands have just entered the water at about shoulder width. Notice that his head is pointing down and almost facing behind him and is well below his arms. His legs then beat down powerfully (slide 2) while his head shifts to face more forward and his bum moves up, making his shape almost like an "S". The arms scull outward as the head moves upward at the end of the propulsive kick (slide 3).It almost looks as though the head has broken the surface but at this point it hasn't. Slide 4 shows the moment the swimmer "Catches" the water as his hands and forearms drop while his elbows remain high.
The hands drive in an "S" pattern out, down and then inwards. Slide 5 shows the hands beginning to point inwards, which continues in slide 6, where the forearms are at a 90o angle to the upper arm, which shows the start of the drive phase of the stroke. Note that his head is still bellow the surface of the water. Once the drive phase starts the hands accelerate.... .... very swiftly, hence the blurring in these pictures 7 and 8. In slide 7 the head breaks the surface of the water. Then, as the hands accelerate backwards a powerful downwards kick helps propel the head out of the water so the swimmer can breathe. This is shown in the difference between slides 7 and 8, showing that  breathing happens before the hands have left the water.
The hands must be recovered as quickly as possible and generally follow a wide sweeping pattern close to the surface of the water. The head returns to the water when his hands are approximately level with the shoulders In slide 11 you will see the head being driven down as the hands are about to enter the water. At the same time the legs have begun the propulsive drive downwards ready to propel the body forward while the arms have no propulsive force.
To get the timing right one arm drills are often used by butterfly swimmers, normally in patterns of 2 right - 2 left right up to 4 right - 4 left. It's important when doing these drills to generate maximum arm speed at the end of the stroke so recovery can be really fast.