How To Swim BACKSTROKE Correctly

If I could only teach you one thing about backstroke, it would be- Hold on. We're not only going to talk about how to swim faster, we're going to share with you the most important and powerful drills that you can do. We are going to show you how to, first of all, swim quicker, swim more efficient, and execute all your techniques the right way. Buckle up and let's go. I first want to talk about body position and how most swimmers screw this up. Show us on the illustration here, what does a good body position look like in backstroke, and what does a bad body position look like? This is a very good demonstration and a very good illustration of a good body position when we're swimming backstroke. Sorry, coach. I'm going to have to cut you off again. I would disagree. This head position is way too high. His whole head is out of the water. Here, I'm just going to redraw it. That's a bad head position. That is what we call a good observation. That was fantastic. Thank you. So, we want our body to be in line with the surface when we swim any stroke. Again, our goal when we swim is to always be as close to the surface as possible. If there is any movement up or down or side to side, we are immediately wasting time. Our goal when we swim is to move forward and forward only. A mistake a lot of swimmers make is their head is first of all moving, which is then like a domino effect. It affects the rest of your body because your head is your steering wheel. So, as soon as your head starts moving, your body starts moving up and down also, which is going to just create tons of turbulence and resistance, which is something we want to avoid. The first point I would like to talk about is our rotation on backstroke. And the reason rotation is so important is because we want to achieve a deep pull. We want to make sure when we are putting on backstroke, our catch is nice and deep. So, Faris, could you please tell me the importance of a deep catch when we swim backstroke? Well, we want to pull water, not air. I sometimes see swimmers not really rotating very much and the fingers are literally half grabbing air, half grabbing water. It's not a deep enough catch. You think about freestyle, right? Backstroke is almost like freestyle kind of on your side. You rotate on each side every single time. You're not all the way on your side, but if you think about freestyle, our pull is pretty deep. Our fingertips are driving down to the bottom. If we rotate our body 45 degrees, we put ourselves at our side. We're going to pull much deeper. We're going to have denser water. We're going to have more strength. We're going to be able to engage our lat muscles and the stronger muscles in our body to have a stronger pull. Is there anything else you want to add? Yeah. So still on a topic of rotation, Faris, at which point do we rotate on backstroke? I think the rotation actually starts with your hands and your hips kind of at the same time. So your hands, your thumb is exiting the water. And at that point, that shoulder is dry because you're already on the opposite side. So you want your hips to be driving rotational momentum. So your legs are doing a lot of work from a rotational perspective. But if your shoulders don't follow with that rotational momentum, then you're going to be flat. So a lot of swimmers are suing just flat backstroke or maybe they're only rotating the shoulders, but the hips aren't giving any rotation. So your hips have to have some rotational momentum that comes from your core and your legs. And then, as I mentioned, your thumb is coming out of the water and your body's rotating. And now your pinky is going to enter the water and your pinky is going to slice in. And that's how you get into that deep catch. But if you don't rotate your hips and your shoulders, you're not going to be in that deeper catch position. And then once you've rotated, now you're on your opposite side. And now your opposite arm, shoulder is dry. And now your thumb is going to exit the water. Faris, could you please talk us through racing backstroke? Some key aspects and ways in which I can improve my 50 backstroke time or even the 100 backstroke time. I mean, most swimmers, whether they're racing or just going out for a stroll in the park, move their arms too slow. Backstroke, and I'm guilty of this as a native breaststroker, you get comfortable. You're on your back, you're breathing, you see the clouds or maybe you see the stains on the ceiling of the pool, of an indoor pool, and you just get too comfortable. Backstroke should have a little bit of tension at all times. Even when you're swimming easy backstroke, there's some level of posture that you need to have, some core engagement, some muscular activation. And what happens is if you train backstroke slow, it's almost impossible to swim it fast. Because yes, you need to have good mechanics when you're slower, but it doesn't mean swim all the time slow. And this includes IM training when you're doing butterfly backstroke, breaststroke freestyle. It's very easy to go hard on the fly and then take backstroke off and just relax. And so when you want to race, you need to train your body how to move your arms faster with tempo. Sometimes we can move our legs faster, but your arms get stuck. You need to learn how to rotate side to side with intensity. Snap your hips back and forth. The only way to do that is to practice moving your arms faster. And the only way to do that is to have that level of tension and intensity and intentionality when you're actually training. Any drills or any other things to comment on? I definitely love the fact that you kind of sync the rotation and the movement of the arms together. I think this is a mistake a lot of swimmers make. They try to spin their arms, but their body cannot physically rotate that quickly. So of course, the speed at which you can rotate will dictate how quickly you can rotate your arms. So if you can't rotate quickly, there is absolutely no way you can move your arms quickly. So if you are out there and you are struggling to get your tempo up on backstroke, the number one thing you should focus on is teaching your body how to rotate from side to side nice and quickly. And then in regards to drills, again, one of my all-time favorites, very simple is soldier position rotations. So again, just placing both arms by your side, making sure your body is nice and flat on a water surface, and just trying to get that shoulder in line with your chin. And of course, when we swim backstroke, your head at no point should ever move. So just trying to get that chin in line with your shoulder, pausing in that position for three to four seconds, and then very slowly rotating to the other side. And again, to improve our rotation speed, we can then try to transition that drill into slightly faster rotations. And then again, with that same drill, we can go into single arm backstroke, we can go into three-second switch. Which, Faris, you can talk us through. So what other drills can you recommend? Yeah, I love three-stroke switch. So you take three strokes and then you switch to the side, you pause for six or 12 kicks. And that way you're teaching your body how to balance on your side while kicking. And then you also get the transitional momentum from doing full stroke cycles. Another drill I really love, talking about the head position, is the cup on forehead. That's a cup right there that I drew. And the idea is you're balancing a cup. And it seems like silly, why would you do that? And that's because if you look at the best backstrokers in the world, they can swim pretty much at race pace, and they can balance a cup on their forehead. Because not only is it the balance component, not moving your head, it's also how consistent the head position is in the right spot. So the initial purple circle that Coach Leo drew, the head was too high, the cup is going to fall over. The cup would be like this. It's going to fall off, right? It's going to fill with water, it's going to spill over. If you keep your head in line and the middle of your head is the water line, you're going to be able to keep that cup balanced and it's going to make you a lot better in your body position. Another great way to make sure your body position is good on backstroke is just simply paying attention to your face staying dry. Something I'm also guilty of when I used to swim backstroke is bobbing up and down. So I could just feel this water flying over my face as I'm swimming. But simply when I just started to pay attention to my face staying dry, it helped me keep my body position in a much better position. That's a great way to improve your body position and improve your backstroke. I got a bonus one for you guys because a lot of you are trying to improve your momentum off the wall, your underwater dolphin kick. And here's a pro tip that I only, I feel guilty almost learning this when I was like a college swimmer. But so many swimmers who are younger than that could learn this. And even if you're older than that, this is a great skill. So let's use our illustration right here and let's pretend we're already under the water. This is the new water line. So the swimmer, this is the wall right here. This is the wall. And so this swimmer is pushing off the wall in a streamlined position. This swimmer, this is their eyes. These are the eyes. They should be able to see through the surface of the water and either see the sky if they're outside like us or the ceiling. If you push off the wall and you're not making eye contact with either the sky or the ceiling, you're not in the right body position. It took me until I was swimming for 20 years to figure this out. And I was pretty close, but I wasn't making eye contact. And this really is a huge unlock if you want to be better at your underwater dolphin kick. It's a game changer. And if you want more game changing advice, how to swim all the different strokes, make sure you check out this video right over here. I'll see you over there and happy swimming.