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At the Race Club we work with athletes of all ages and abilities. Often times they require different training methods or swim techniques. In this Backstroke Starts video series we worked with a variety of age group swimmers and Masters that each required different approaches to their respective start. Of course there is a technique that we strive for and that we were fortunate to have superstar age group swimmer Josh Zuchowski perform. Josh is a soon to be collegiate swimmer that swims all 4 strokes extremely well but his specialty is backstroke. We were excited to help Josh get a little better with his backstroke start! The ideal start is not for everyone as we will learn in the series but there is a good reason why most of the best backstroke starters in the world use a very similar backstroke start technique. We believe it’s important to understand what that technique entails no matter what age you are.

Head Race Club Coach Devin Murphy leads this session with the campers where they continue to work on the hand entry in freestyle. We like to use a mono snorkel and fins when working on the hand entry that allows the swimmer to focus on the swim technique. We are seeing the best swimmers in the enter the water with the fingers and hand squeezed together and then separated slightly for the initiation of the pull phase. Some swimmers have a natural tendency to do this technique but it’s definitely worth noting and working on if you are like most swimmers that enter the water with relaxed hands.

A lot of swimmers don’t think about how they are breathing but it can make a huge difference in your freestyle swim technique. Even at the highest level there are common mistakes in breathing. Nathan Adrian is perhaps the best ‘breather’ in the world when it comes to how he takes his breath in a race. He uses his neck muscles to force the head back down quickly to minimize the amount of drag caused by the head out of alignment. In this video Race Club coaches teach swim drills to help the campers learn the proper way to breath, like Nathan Adrian!

The swimming technique of how to hold the hand at entry in freestyle is not often discussed. Yet it is extremely important. An improper positioning of the hand and wrist at entry can lead to big increases in frontal drag during this early part of the pulling cycle. Many swimmers are taught to relax their hands at entry which is a huge mistake. Doing so leads to the water flowing and opening the fingers and thumb or turning the wrist either to the outside (flaring) or upwards. The increase in drag from the poor hand technique at race speed can range from a 3% to 12% increase, depending on the position of the hand.

We have found that by turning the pinky down and holding the hand vertically after the breath stroke in hip-driven and hybrid-freestyle can further reduce the drag from the hand in front. Rising swimming superstar Josh Zuchowski demonstrates in this video how he rotates his hand with the little pinky down after the breath stroke in freestyle to glide through the water with less resistance. This technique has been used by some of the world’s greatest hip and hybrid freestylers, including Michael Phelps, Sun Yang and Mykail Romanchuk of Ukraine.

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Two Great Backstroke Sets

In training swimmers at The Race Club, we feel some sets should focus on technique, while others should focus on conditioning using good technique. Here are two sets that include both.

Is Teaching Bilateral Breathing in Freestyle Necessary?

Of the thousands of swimmers who have come to The Race Club, we have found that a very high percentage of them are being taught to breathe to both sides in freestyle, often referred to as bilateral breathing. Observing elite freestylers of both genders,

In our new video release this week, we take a very commonly used and popular drill and apply it to a different swimming technique, hip-driven freestyle. Normally, we use this drill in teaching the importance of coupling in shoulder-driven freestyle, but this drill has many other good applications.