What's going on swim fans in this video i'm gonna share with you the five biggest mistakes that
swimmers make doing backstroke whether you're a beginner swimmer or you're a veteran i guarantee
you're gonna learn something new in this video i'm not only gonna talk about the different
mistakes that swimmers make but i'm going to break down some different drills that can help
you improve upon those skills not only that at the end of the video i'm going to share with you
an exclusive workout and how to walk through it i swim through it so that you can improve your back
stroke and apply everything we're gonna talk about if you guys are new to the channel what's up i'm
ferris co-founder and ceo of my swim pro and here we talk about how to swim faster and smarter than
ever before to help you improve your performance and health both in and out of the water so if you
want to be a part of the fam make sure you drop that subscribe like this video let me know in
the comments if you're a backstroker and what challenges you struggle with that we're about
to talk about let's get right into it now the first mistake is poor head position i can't tell
you how many swimmers i see swimming with their head completely out of the water you're looking
at your toes i don't know what you're looking at but when you swim back stroke it's so critical
to have a neutral body line meaning the water line is intersecting your middle of your head
your eyes are looking at the ceiling or at the sky at the clouds if there's a bird if there's a plane
make sure you can see it if you're looking towards your feet what's going to happen is
your hips are going to sink it is so important to have a neutral head position because it's actually
going to improve your body position remember the water is 800 times more resistive than air so you
want to try and minimize the amount of resistance that you have moving through the water so it's so
important to keep your head back and really focus on getting a neutral body position irrespective of
the rotation which we'll talk about now a great drill to work on this skill is swimming with a
cup on your head yes take a cup a water bottle whatever you have fill it halfway full with water
or anything chocolate milk for that matter but fill it halfway with water and balance it on your
head now an easy way to start with this drill is just by floating and kicking have your arms
at your side start out at the side of the pool and put the cup right on your forehead and start
to kick really focus on balancing once you've found your balance go ahead and start taking
some arm strokes the more stable you can keep your head the more efficient your stroke is going to
become and you're going to reduce the amount of resistance that you have in the water so i
love this drill and maybe if you want to be katie ledecky and superstar you can put some chocolate
milk and swim face down with the cup halfway full now the second biggest mistake is hand entry and
exit and what i mean by this couple different things so when you exit the water in your stroke
you need to exit with your thumb first even the most experienced swimmers somehow get this wrong
and it happens over practice so you need to practice exiting the water with your thumb first
and you need to have your arm straight on the recovery a lot of swimmers can swim really fast
and their elbows are bent and all over the place above the water your arms should be absolutely
straight leading with your thumb and as you rotate and you dip that shoulder under water
then you're going to rotate and you're gonna enter the water with your pinky first so when you
first learn how to swim back stroke or if you're learning now this is how it works thumb exits the
water and pinky enters the water at 11 o'clock and one o'clock just outside of your shoulder width
now the entire time your arm is out of the water it needs to be straight we're going to talk about
a big mistake a lot of swimmers make is bending the arm above the water and then having the arms
straight underneath the water it's actually the opposite above the water your arm is straight
underneath the water we need to have a bent elbow so how can you focus on this proper
mechanics of the rotation and nailing your thumb coming out and your pinky entering the water first
so the first thing i love this drill three strokes and 12 kicks so what you're gonna do is you take
three back stroke strokes and then you're gonna pause on your side with your shoulder out of the
water and your other arm up as straight as you can and you're gonna take 12 strokes then you're going
to continue that same rotation three strokes 12 kicks and as you do this drill it's so important
to think about not only rotating and driving with your hips but also what we talked about with your
hands entering the water or exiting with your thumb entering with your pinky now a more advanced
drill is to do single arm backstroke this is where one arm is glued to your side and you're gonna
take full strokes with just one arm it's gonna be so important to drive with your legs and your core
but also to exit the water with your thumb and enter the water with your pinky huge mistake
is swimming with bent elbows over the water and entering the water with all sorts of parts of your
hand that you're not supposed to now the third biggest mistake is having a straight arm pull
there are so many swimmers who are really powerful and strong and they muscle through the water with
a straight arm underwater pull now similar to freestyling all of our strokes we want to have
an early vertical forearm meaning we're bending our elbow underneath the water remember above the
water our arm is straight below the water we've got to bend that elbow so as soon as your pinky
enters the water just outside shoulder width at 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock arms on the clock you need
to make sure you're bending your elbow now how do you bend your arm a great drill is to do double
arm back strokes sometimes we rotate too much or too little and our arm is straight but when you
swim back stroke with both arms at the same time you really have to bend your elbow and really
pull the water in a little bit more of a shallower pull pattern because you can't rotate right you're
taking both arms you're stroking at the same time and you're really focusing on pulling with power
with a bent elbow so really important skill right there now the fourth biggest mistake that swimmers
make and this one might be the biggest of all of them especially for more experienced veteran
swimmers is swimming with a slow tempo if you want to swim backstroke fast you've got to train fast
and even if you're not trying to compete in a competition in backstroke you need to train
your body at an elevated tempo you need to get your arms moving faster i have it right here as
an exclamation point move your arms faster yes so how can you do that here's a great drill i
really like it's called spin drill now spin drill is where you position your body at a near
90 degrees in the water and you're actually going to spin your arms as fast as possible it's very
explosive fast twitch and you're only going to do that for maybe five seconds maybe you go by stroke
you take 10 strokes as fast as you can and the goal is not to pull as much water as possible it's
to spin your arms as much as possible and what you're going to do is you're going to activate
all these different muscles you're going to be firing and as you do that you're going to train
your mind and your body what it feels like to have that fast tempo so when you flatten out
your body position and you return to putting your eyes looking at the ceiling and looking
at the sky it's going to be a lot easier to move your arms faster when you do the spin drill you're
not looking at the ceiling you're looking at your feet it's as if you're sitting in a chair and the
goal is not we're breaking all of these rules the goal is not to necessarily swim fast it's
to move your arms fast because if you want to get that tempo up you're gonna have to swim fast all
right now the fifth and final backstroke mistake we have some bonuses for you don't go anywhere
is not working your walls remember the water is 800 times more resistant than air whether you swim
backstroke breaststroke butterfly or freestyle you're moving through this medium that is so slow
the fastest you move is in streamline off the wall you're like a torpedo moving through the
water and so it's important that you maximize your momentum and speed off the wall now this applies
whether you're a competing swimmer or you just went backstroke for fitness because it's important
to maintain your momentum off the wall and carry that into the stroke now if you're trying to
compete in the 500 or 200 backstroke even in the individual medley this will make or break
a backstroker in short course swimming 60 of the race is done underneath the water so if you're not
able to perform on your walls and not working them consistently it's not going to work out for you
so how do you build your underwater dolphin cake how do you build the fifth stroke of swimming so
i have a few different tips for you and then we have a workout that i'm going to walk you through
that really applies some of these skills now the first skill is something i like to call
eyes on the prize and oftentimes when i see and i analyze strokes underneath the water
swimmers will push off the wall underwater and you'll be looking at your feet you know
our first mistake here that head position needs to be neutral and you need to find the flexibility to
flatten out your body so that way your eyes are on the prize and the prize being the ceiling or
the sky and when you push off underwater on your back you should be able to see through the water
and you should be able to see the ceiling clearly and if you're not able to do that it means your
head position and your upper body position is not correct and you're forcing yourself up to
the surface of the water potentially sooner than you need to and you're causing more resistance
so when you push off the wall eyes on the prize you should be able to see the ceiling
through the water and if you can't do that your body position is not right now another thing that
i like to recommend is building every 25 or 50 underwater so if you're in a long course pool
it's a 50 if you're in a short course pull it to 25. what i mean by that is if you're doing 450s
or 4 100s or 850s your goal is to gradually add dolphin kicks every single repetition
so for example if you do 450's backstroke in a long course pool on the first 50 you're going
to take three dolphin kicks underwater off the wall in streamline on the second 50 you're going
to take four dolphin kicks then five dolphin kicks and on the final one you're gonna take six dolphin
kicks and you're training your lungs your body and your mind what it's like to apply the eyes on the
prize skill and really develop your body so that you can always work your walls even under fatigue
very very important skill now before we get to talking about a workout that you can apply this
and really a great example of how you build those underwaters is not having a plan this is a huge
mistake whether you swim on a team or you train on your own you have to know what specific skill that
you're working on improving so here's an example if you swim on a team the workout is provided
for you maybe it's one like that we're going to talk about maybe it's doing these 50s that i just
mentioned you have to focus on one specific thing that you're trying to improve if you're trying to
improve your your speed your tempo your distance off the wall the number of kicks that you take
your body position your rotation whatever it is you need to know exactly what you're working on
and do it consistently because not having a plan is how you set yourself up for failure and
if you're trying to achieve a goal which i hope you're doing and you're writing those goals down
you're setting smart goals you're only going to be able to achieve those goals if you have a plan
of attack now let's say you're not on a team and you write the workout yourself same thing applies
you need to be very strategic if you're looking for a training program you should check out the
my swim pro app where you can get a personalized training program workout by workout set by set
sync with the apple watch or garmin available for ios or android it's a free download make
sure you check out the app linked in description below now let's say we're going to do a workout
here is my favorite backstroke workout i should say favorite workout but one of my favorite
types of workouts let me explain it for you so we're gonna easy warm up we've got a 500
freestyle followed by 650's kick now on these kicks we're going to work our underwaters
so every 25 we're going to try and add some dolphin kicks we're going to really try and eat
along it if you're a more advanced swimmer you're trying to push 15 meters on every single 25. if
you're just getting started maybe it's two dolphin kicks underwater in streamline i like doing
kick streamline on back you can use a kickboard that's great but take the opportunity to work
on your underwater dolphin kick there's no better time than working on your underwater dolphin kick
except for every single time you push off the wall so take advantage of a kick set
do it on your back in streamline now the next part after the 650s kick is 450 is individual medley
again work the underwaters really take an opportunity to develop that underwater dolphin
kick remember you kick in both directions up and down on one part of the kick you use your core
your hip flexors your quads on the reverse lower back glutes hamstrings when you do dolphin kick
you're kicking in both directions now let's get into the main set we're gonna go
four rounds four rounds through a 200 freestyle or pull now that is nice and easy nothing crazy
just to get the heart rate elevated a little bit and then we're going to follow that up with 475s
backstroke now on these 475's backstroke each 25 we're gonna try and build the number
of kicks that we take so on the first 25 maybe you take three dolphin kicks then four dolphin
kicks on the second 25 and then five dolphin kicks on the third 25 these number of kicks is relative
to your skill level if you start out with zero or one and you build up from there that's fine
if you're more advanced and you can start out with seven dolphin kicks then eight then nine then ten
whatever it takes to be consistent and you wanna push your body so that way you can really maximize
your underwater dolphin kicks and of course eyes on the prize now we're gonna do that four rounds
through and the reason why we're doing it four rounds on the odd round so round number one and
round number two we're gonna wear we're not gonna wear any equipment so we're gonna go all natural
rounds two and four we're adding in fins and so with fins it might be easier to push those
underwaters a little bit further so if you're like myself maybe you have an okay dolphin kick but as
soon as you put fins on and you've got a little bit more resistance you can really make some magic
happen if that's the case great make sure you're adding to the number of dolphin kicks you take
underneath the water when you apply the fins so round number one and round number three
all natural round number two and round number four we're gonna go fins after that you're gonna finish
with a 200 cooldown and that is a 3200 meter workout 3200 meters and you're gonna be able
to apply a lot of things that we talked about so let me know what you guys think in the comments
how do you like backstroke is it your best stroke if you haven't checked out my other videos about
the biggest mistake swimmers make in freestyle butterfly or breaststroke and this video's
backstroke make sure you check those out on our channel if you guys haven't already subscribed yet
make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on the next video if you haven't checked out my book
swim like a pro i analyze all those different strokes and how you can swim faster and smarter
than ever before it'll be linked in the description below and finally if you're
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i'll see you guys in the comments and inside that facebook group have a great day and happy swimming