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At The Race Club we see swimmers of all ages and ability levels. In this backstroke start video Race Club head coach Devin Murphy teaches 11 year old swimmer Layne use the backstroke bar.
Layne begins her backstroke start like a lot of young swimmers using the gutter. This is often taught to younger swimmers who don’t yet have the strength to pull themselves up. One of Layne’s goals was to learn to utilize the backstroke bar. Coach Devin teaches Layne how to place her feet properly on the backstroke wedge. Layne also learns how to engage the ready position.
We often allow our younger swimmers to pull in slightly closer to the block until they develop upper body strength. Layne like most beginners had difficulty using her leg strength to push up and off of the wall. In order to build her confidence we practiced a dryland drill that helped Layne with the athletic movement necessary for a good backstroke start.
We also like to use a swim drill for the backstroke start that is demonstrated by Olympic hopeful Amy Bilquist. She has her feet high in the water utilizing the backstroke wedge and is able to get an amazing arch in her spine. As Amy leaves the blocks she throws the head and hands back and clears the surface of the water and enters cleanly.
We hope you enjoyed this 3 part video series on the backstroke start that features most every level of Athlete. We take a slightly different approach with each Athlete.

At The Race Club we often have age group swimmers, high school swimmers and masters swimmers all in the same camp. This unique swim camp experience allows our athletes not only to learn from our Race Club coaches, but from each other as well.
In this video Head Race Club Coach Devin Murphy works with high school breaststroke specialist Bora Hurst. Bora had little experience with the backstroke start.
While watching Bora’s start you’ll learn some common mistakes that swimmers make in the backstroke start. These include having the feet too wide on the wall, and looking back with the head in the “take your mark” position. You’ll also see first-hand what happens if the head stays back too long on a backstroke starts. We see many campers that make the same mistakes that Bora initially does.
Then coach Devin works with world class masters swimmer Mike Boosin. Like many swimmers, Mike had his feet too close together in the ready position. He also makes the common mistake of exiting the arched position too early. Mike is an experienced backstroke specialist and we found a couple easy fixes that made his start much faster.
The backstroke start requires a lot of nuance, and we’re happy to share what makes a great backstroke start over the next few weeks from our incredible swim camp in the Florida Keys!

At the Race Club we see a lot of swimmers that have an out sweep in freestyle. This swim technique mistake is more common than an in sweep but we do see a lot of both problems. We have found the FINIS Iso Paddle to be a great tool to correct the out sweep. The design of this product creates resistance in either an out sweep or in sweep pulling motion that allows the athlete to understand how to pull correctly. Check out how Gary Sr works with the Race Club Campers that all had a problem ‘out sweeping’ in their freestyle swim technique.

Jenna and Ciera Fujiwara visited us from Hawaii to work with coach Gary in San Diego. Ciera has incredible shoulder flexibility allowing her to recover her arms straight above her head. Coupled with a late breath this technique can be the fastest way to swim butterfly with the likes of Joseph Schooling and Rikako Ikee. This technique isn’t for everyone as Ciera’s sister Jenna has better success with a wider/lower arm recovery. Find out what makes Ciera a perfect candidate for this technique and how we use swim drills to improve!

How to Finish your Breaststroke Pullout

Whether you are an IMer or a breaststroker, you will need to develop a strong breaststroke pullout to win races. As we so often teach at The Race Club, to do that means the swimmer needs to maximize propulsion and minimize frontal drag. 

One of the most common problems we find with the backstroke starts among our Race Club swimmers is going too deep. While it is not…

Freestyle Technique: Avoid the Out Sweep

How a swimmer initiates the freestyle pulling motion, setting up for the catch, is vitally important.

Will we ever see a sub-20 second 50-meter freestyle LC?
Gary Hall Jr was asked this question recently on a podcast hosted by Bryan Lundquist. His answer was a quick and emphatic yes.