5 Backstroke Mistakes and How to Fix Them

My coaches used to ask me: “Why is backstroke your favorite stroke?” Usually, I would answer, “Because I can breathe the whole time!” In reality, it has just always been the stroke I most enjoyed.

During fourteen years of competitive swimming, backstroke was my specialty. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get it right. I also spent a lot of time coaching swimmers and teachings kids proper technique.

Throughout that experience, I noticed a handful of most common mistakes. As soon as a kid can float on their back, they are ready to start swimming backstroke. And when I say backstroke, I’m talking about the competitive swim stroke. Here is some guidance on learning elementary backstroke (a skill for survival swimming). Otherwise, let’s take a look at the five most common mistakes in swimming backstroke correctly (and how to fix them):

Mistake #1: Head position

Nothing will sink your proverbial ship faster than improper head position. If you want to know why, just try lifting your head up and looking at your toes the next time you’re doing a back float. It won’t be long before you’re wondering how you got to the bottom of the pool. Buoyancy in backstroke is directly linked to where you place your head while swimming.

The most common mistake is to have your head too far forward. People tend to tuck the chin too far forward, bringing it in towards the neck or chest. This creates a bend in the spine, which folds the body in a way that makes it significantly harder to float. The more you have to fight the water to stay afloat, the slower your backstroke will be.

Luckily, the remedy is simple. First, relax your neck and head position back. You can do this by thinking about lifting your chin or pointing it straight up to the sky. The neck should lie flat or even slightly tilted back. To get the feel, you may need to exaggerate by almost trying to look over the top of your head. Play around with it, leaning your head back further and pointing the chin higher, until you feel that natural floating position. I promise, you’ll find it. Once you do, don’t ever move your head again while swimming backstroke. In backstroke, the head never moves.

Mistake # 2: Under-kicking

Speed in backstroke is all about the legs: Your power comes from your flutter kicks. But, like in other strokes, people tend to rely too much on their arms. This is probably because people don’t kick properly. You backstroke kick should feel like it is starting from the top of the hip bone and powering through the water down to your pointed toe. The leg shouldn’t be stiff, but also not so bent that your knee breaks the surface of the water. Find a swim coach near you to help you refine your leg kicks. Once you’re kicking properly, improving your speed in backstroke will directly correlate to how hard you can kick and for how long. This is where that fitness components kicks in (pun sort of intended), because if you’re kicking like you should, you’ll be feeling the burn quickly. If you feel like you’re kicking hard, you’re not. You can kick harder. By the end of your race, there should be no doubt in your mind that you couldn’t have kicked another yard.

Mistake # 3: Body Rotation

This mistake is a tricky one to explain (add that to your list of reasons for contacting your local Sunsational Instructor). Imagine standing up straight and having a pole or line, known as an “axis,” that runs down through the center of your head, through the midline of your body, and then extends down right in between your feet. That’s called the long axis. For freestyle and backstroke (the “long axis strokes”), rotation around this line is critical to improve speed.

So what does “rotation” mean? Keeping that line in mind, it means that you will rotate back and forth, along that axis, from one side to the other while you swim. Imagine you’re swimming backstroke and have just reached back with your right arm to take a stroke. While that right arm is pulling or powering through the water, you should almost be lying entirely on your right side until your hand breaks the surface near your hips. By then, your left arm should be reaching to pull through the water for another stroke. And as that left arms pulls, you guessed it: you should practically be lying on your left side in the water. So here’s the million dollar question: how did you get from your right side for your right arm stroke to your left side for the left arm stroke? You rotated! Your rotation on that long axis means your entire body rolled from right to left so that you were almost lying completely on your side on the right and then completely on your side on the left. But remember: the head never moves! So while your body position rotates along your long axis, keep your head straight. You should always be looking straight up to the sky while your body rotates around your neck.

Rotation is key because it improves buoyancy, supports proper kicking, and allows to you complete a more powerful arm stroke. As you learn to rotate, you’ll start to feel there is a rhythm, a specific timing between your arms, kicks, and rotation. Finding that rhythm is critical to getting faster at backstroke.

Mistake # 4: Hands

The way your hands enters, pull through, and exit the water makes a big difference on speed. And the reason I focus on hands is this: If your hands are doing things right, the rest of your arm will follow.

When it comes to hands, here’s the phrase to brand into your soul regarding arm movements: “Thumb out, pinky in.” When your hand comes out of the water at the end of each arm pull of backstroke, the hand will be down by your hips. The first thing that should come out of the water should be your thumb. If your thumb comes out first, it means the hand, wrist, and arm are facing the right way to begin a new arm stroke. As your thumb emerges from the water, your arm straight follows. That creates the arc as you reach above your head to have your hand enter the water and begin a new pull. As your hand goes into the water, the first thing to enter should be the pinky. This means that while the arm was arched you had to rotate your hand to the outside so that your palms face away from you. That allows the pinky to be the first thing to enter the water. Thumb out, pinky in. Once your hand is in the water, keep those fingers together throughout the entirety of the pull. If your pulling properly, the first thing that should exit the water is the thumb. I used to have my swimmers say that phrase aloud for hundreds of yards: “Thumb out! Pinky in!” It’s a good way to fix most the problems I see with hands.

Mistake # 5: Arm positioning

A few years ago, my father started getting into swimming for exercise. After a few months, he came to me complaining that backstroke was causing pain in his shoulder. We talked over rotation, which he started doing, but then I noticed the positioning of his arms was wrong in a way that was really hard on the shoulder.

So where do you want your arms to enter the water? Stand up and raise both arms above your head. You probably raised them straight up so they are in line with your shoulders and the rest of your body. For backstroke, that’s wrong. Open them up wider. Make a “Y” out your body. That width is where you want your arms to be when they enter a pull in backstroke. Much wider and you lose power. Much narrower and you lose power. Y. If your chest was the center of a clock, have your arms enter somewhere between the 1-2 o’clock and 10-11 o’clock positions.

Finally, when you’re making the arc with your arm to start another pull (known as the stroke recovery), your arm should never cross that center line or long axis.

Conclusion:

If you can address these common errors, you’ll be well on your way to an improved backstroke. If you’re looking for more technique help, check out our other blog articles on topics like how to improve your freestyle technique. Overcoming these mistakes is simple, but it takes some practice. So what are you waiting for? Contact your local Sunsational instructor and start improving your stroke today!