Welcome to whiteboard Wednesday on today's video i'm going to share with you how to swim backstroke
with perfect technique and in this video i'm going to break down the fundamentals of the
stroke everything from body position the way you pull in backstroke how you should kick how you
can develop your underwaters and make sure you watch to the end of the video because i'm going
to be sharing with you a few drills that can apply some of these techniques now this video is really
designed for not only beginners but more advanced swimmers who are looking to take their backstroke
to the next level so if you guys are new to the channel welcome my name is ferris savetti i'm
the co-founder and ceo of my swim pro and we help swimmers all over the world swim faster
and smarter than ever before with training and technique tips both in and out of the water so
if you guys are new make sure you subscribe to the channel like this video and let me know in
the comments who your favorite backstroker is now before we talk about the body position i quickly
want to talk about a few of the differences between backstroke and some of the other strokes
you know some people are really comfortable on their backs and others like myself feel like
they're drowning and they have no idea how to keep their body afloat and there's a few reasons
for that first of all swimming backstroke like freestyle it's a long axis stroke meaning if you
took a laser and just divided your body through the middle you're actually rotating side to side
across that rotational axis that cuts through the middle of your body this is a lot different
than breast stroke oftentimes breaststrokers are not as comfortable on their back and vice versa
so you also enter the water with your pinky finger first now that's a lot different than the other
strokes and there's a few other mechanics with backstroke that differentiate it from some of
the other strokes in addition to entering the water with your pinky uh finger first
you're also breathing the entire time if you do it right at least you're on your back and your
face should be pretty much dry the entire time now that doesn't mean you don't get water in
your mouth and you have to you know spit it out but for the most part you're on your back you
want to keep your head up and that ties into our body position so i have two diagrams on the board
if you look one diagram has the swimmer's head in purple and their head is completely out of
the water if anything they're looking at their feet they're looking at the view they're looking
at the flags at the wall whoever's watching them trying to take that selfie and that's not good
because when you lift your head up then your legs are going to sink and remember water is 800 times
more resistive than air so if you want to swim fast backstroke or any stroke for that matter
you have to reduce the amount of drag that you have if you look at this diagram you can see
just by lowering the legs and by lifting that head up then the amount of drag that you're creating is
just so much more then in this other diagram the head position is flat you should basically have
the middle of your head is where the intersection of the water in the sky is or the air and you're
looking straight up you want your belly button if you're trying to float your belly button should be
dry and you want your entire body as high in the water as possible that's only possible if your
head is looking up your eyes are looking at the ceiling or the sky if you're swimming outside your
legs are gonna rise and if you're just getting started and you can kind of almost forget about
all these rotation things we're gonna talk about you just need to get your belly button dry if
you look at your feet your butt is going to sink and you're going to swim really really slow and
you're going to get tired really really fast if you swim with fins you can actually amplify this
bad behavior and these poor techniques because the fins will allow you to let your legs sink and you
won't really notice just how much your legs are actually dragging so you want to reduce the amount
of resistance you have a great drill bonus drill for you guys is to try swimming with a cup on
your forehead just fill it with water if you want to be fancy filled with chocolate milk and sort
of one up katie ledecky but you know swim with a backstroke with a cup on your head and you should
have your eyes focused on the ceiling or the sky and that'll set up your body if you don't get this
right everything else we talk about doesn't really work you've got to have the right body position
now once you've got the right body position let's talk about the pull the hand entry and hand exit
and backstroke is its own animal so when you exit the water you're actually exiting with your thumb
first so your arm should be completely straight and your thumb is leading the way as you rotate
and your arm is straight all the way through the recovery you need your pinky to enter the water so
there's like this rotation that happens as your arm is straight you want to point your fingers
to the sky or to the ceiling you should be able to look up at your hand and you make a 90 degree
angle perpendicular your arm is to the water to your body at this point right here and you want to
enter the water with your pinky first the reason why you enter the water with your pinky first
because you're sort of on your side at that point and once you enter the water with your pinky first
you're going to get into an early vertical forearm high elbow catch so basically you want to hit the
water with your pinky first so that way you can initiate the catch when you're on your side and if
you were to just rotate your body over it's just like a freestyle pull so in freestyle we enter the
water with our fingertips first and we initiate that early vertical form we want to catch the
water with not only our hand but also our form if you haven't checked out the whiteboard wednesday
i did how to swim freestyle with perfect technique check it out i overview the early vertical forearm
as well and so because you're on your side that's why you have to enter the water with your pinky
first and then you want to pull all the way down and you should actually be sort of on your side
you're not completely flat on your back you're not completely on your side you're a little bit
closer to your back actually than on your side and different schools of thought on how much
you should rotate that depends on your tempo and speed but without getting too much into the weeds
you're basically on your side and you're going to follow all the way through and you exit with your
thumb you want to avoid creating shoulder drag through the water meaning if you don't rotate
at all then your shoulder is just going to drag through the water and create a lot of resistance
instead you want to have that rotation so as your thumb is exiting your whole arm is
dry including your shoulder and you want your shoulders to be popping out of the water all
this while your eyes are looking at the sky or the ceiling your head needs to be back or else
your legs are going to sink let's talk about the kick it's a flutter kick your toes are pointed
just like you do in freestyle and in dolphin kick breaststroke is the only kick where it's
different where you're doing a frog kick and your feet are flexed you want to be pointing your toes
you want to be kicking with your hip flexors you want your legs almost 100 percent straight the
amplitude there's a little bit of knee bet but the amplitude of your kick is actually about less than
half a meter you know 12 inches to 18 inches less than half a meter it really shouldn't be
that big and the core is generating all the power it's your glutes your hamstrings your lower back
it's your hip flexors not really your quads you want your legs almost completely straight with
a little bit of knee bend you want to be short and fast and if you want to increase your tempo
in backstroke and you want to swim faster you got to decrease the amplitude of your kick it's
not very good to have a huge massive kick and you know your legs are just powering through the water
you're actually just creating more resistance than propulsion so if you want to swim faster have a
smaller kick it sounds kind of counterintuitive but you want to increase the tempo if you can
increase the tempo of your legs your upper body your arms are going to spin a little bit faster
you're going to increase your tempo as well when it comes to rotating i did mention you're on your
back but you're on your side at the same time there's the concept of hip driven backstroke
kinda like you have hip driven freestyle in back stroke it's actually not as much hip driven so you
are driving with your hips not to the extent that you are in freestyle and the reason is because
if you think about shoulder-driven backstrokes that's actually how you're going to be able to
increase your tempo now different swimmers will will have different strengths so some swimmers
have a really strong kick and they can just really power that rotation they can swim pretty fast
without using their arms at all and other swimmers have a terrible kick and their legs are lucky you
know you're lucky if your legs are just floating on top of the water in any capacity if you're
a swimmer like that most likely you want to be thinking about shoulder driven backstroke because
that's how you're going to increase your tempo by popping those shoulders out of the water and
getting the turnover in terms of the rate of which your arms are moving getting it to move faster
if you focus too much on rotating side to side you get your body all the way 90 degrees to each side
most likely you're not going to be able to have that much tempo and you're not going to benefit
that much from getting the full catch you don't need to be 100 on your side we'll actually talk
about a drill that you can really focus on both the rotation and the lack of rotation to have more
of a shoulder driven backstroke in just a minute underwaters ah this is one of my favorite themes
so if you're not familiar the underwaters is what you do on the backstroke start every time you
push off the wall it's really the fifth stroke in swimming this is when you're in streamline
and you look like a dolphin you're creating this beautiful sine curve and really this starts with
your hands being in streamline obviously and pretty much you want to use your entire body
you want to kick up and down i mentioned before when we're talking about the kick and flutter kick
similarly in dolphin kick you want to be kicking in both directions you have an up kick and a down
kick on one side you have your lower back glutes and hamstring that you want to activate and on the
other side the front of your core your diaphragm you obviously have your core you have your hip
flexors and you have your quads both are super important one side is more powerful than the other
but because they're both important if you don't use both sides of your body you're not
going to swim as fast you think about a fish a dolphin a shark the reason why they consume so
fast is they're using their entire frame to move through the water and leveraging every
inch and centimeter of that of that frame to move themselves forward so it's really important to
kick in both directions fun fact for you guys the underwater rule didn't actually apply in
swimming you can only go 15 meters uh underwater if you watch the olympic games you'll see some of
that from the best swimmers uh in 1956 the 15 meter rule was added to breaststroke it's now
has been removed and then in 1988 it was moved to 10 meters for backstroke because some folks like
berkoff and others were going so far underneath the water because it's so much faster going
underneath the water than swimming faster than freestyle even in 1991 it was extended from 10
meters to 15 meters for backstroke and in night until 1998 just over 20 years ago and the 15 meter
rule was applied for butterfly and freestyle so obviously if you can master this it can make up 60
of the race or more if you swim in a short course pool to go 15 meters underwater
so this is a really core skill to develop for not only backstroke but all of your swimming if you
want to be competitive and do pool competitions now finally let's talk about tempo we mentioned it
a little bit with the shoulder driven backstroke the reason why tempo is so important if you're
like me when you're on your back and you're doing backstroke you feel like you just can't get your
arms going it's really really difficult you know and that is the determining factor of how fast
you swim backstroke for myself i struggle with this a great drill that allows you to get your
arm speed faster and really pop your shoulders out of the water is doing spin drill this is
where you basically pretend like you're sitting in the chair you're going to get your body really
vertical you're basically going to break all the rules of body position you want to be closer to
option b compared to option a and you're going to spin your arms as fast as possible and the goal is
not to catch water the goal is to teach your body and make that neuromuscular connection how to move
your arms fast what's going to happen is you're going to be a lot flatter and because you're
flatter you're going to be able to move your arms faster and so this is a really high intensity
drill i love it i always do some version of that if i'm prepping for like 100 im you're trying to
get really fast in backstroke you're not taking a lot of strokes in 100 im backstroke so you got
to have the tempo um and actually rotation and kicking can interfere with how fast you can move
your arms so uh we'll talk about a drill in just a second that really leverages this concept but if
you really kick a lot and you try and rotate a lot you're just going to slow down your tempo doesn't
mean it's not as efficient some of the best backstrokers in history like in aaron pearsall
have an incredible rotational drive that's coming from their hips and legs unbelievable they have
fast tempo but a lot of it really depends on the swimmer the distance and your training but
one thing is for sure if you want to move your arms faster you've got to train for your arms to
move faster now let's get into these drills that i promise you the first one and each one is a
different focus the first one is dolphin kick and backstroke pull this is working on power and tempo
so if you're so similar to the spin drill where it's all about getting your arms to move fast the
way you do backstroke with a dolphin kick is you time one arm stroke per dolphin kick it should be
total body it should be explosive and if you do 25 maybe 50 meters of this with repetitions and rest
you're actually going to train your body how to swim more powerfully through your pull now
obviously when you go back to normal you're going to have no more bounce in your in your stroke and
that's fine the goal was to teach your arms how to move faster and how to catch the water spin drill
don't even worry about catching the water just spin your arms as fast as possible now the second
drill is focused on sort of the opposite the rotational concept if you're not really good at
rotating if you swim really really flat especially if you're a beginner often times i see beginner
backstrokers they're actually not rotating enough you're swimming completely flat and just like
freestyle you don't swim completely flat you need to have some level of rotation and so when we're
doing the single arm back stroke it's actually two back stroke strokes on your right arm two on
your left arm and then two full strokes together actually three to get you back onto the other side
so the way this works is you're actually going to focus on having one arm completely at your side
you're taking strokes with just the one arm and you have to use your kick to drive the rotation
because if you don't rotate it's just not going to work you have to pretend and rotate to the extent
that you have another arm pulling when in fact it's not using fins for this drill specifically is
fantastic i highly recommend using fins if you're really fancy you can do this drill without fins
you can even put a cup on your head it's really going to take some core engagement and driving
that rotation with your feet now the final drill is really focusing on flattening your stroke so a
lot of more competitive swimmers they actually rotate too much and it slows down their tempo
so if you're looking at flattening your stroke and really catching with a shallower pull you
do double arm back stroke and when you do double arm backstroke you're as the drill is described
both your thumbs come out at the same time your arms are straight as both your arms come out
don't let yourself sink you're gonna really have to use your legs and then you're gonna catch with
your pinkies and enter the water at eleven and one right outside the shoulder and you're gonna pull
with as flat of a stroke as you can because you can't rotate because you're pulling both arms
at the same time now obviously all of these drills are sort of exaggerations of what you
should actually do so when you do the double arm pull when you do a full back stroke you shouldn't
be that flat you should have some rotation when you're doing the drill like single arm
back stroke and you're rotating pretty much 100 on to your right or your left 90 degree rotation
that's not how you actually swim the full stroke similarly in freestyle you never
actually fully rotate 90 degrees onto your side but sometimes you do drills just to work on the
balance and stability and letting your core and legs drive that rotational momentum so these are
some great drills if you're interested in more drills make sure you check out the my swim pro
app we have hundreds of drills dryland training programs swim training programs for beginners
all the way through advanced swimmers and the my swim pro training algorithm will dynamically adapt
the workouts for you so that they are personalized so that you can reach your goals we also have a
massive facebook group if you guys are not in this and you're looking to get faster and swim smarter
and join a community of swimmers from all over the world over 100 countries thousands of swimmers
check out that group linked in the description below and final shout out if you want any my swim
pro merchandise if you want a t-shirt hoodie tank top no pool no excuses swim cap all that
stuff make sure you check it out the my swim pro store also available in the description of this
video thank you guys for watching make sure you check out the other videos on how to swim perfect
freestyle butterfly backstroke or breaststroke wishing you the best and happy swimming