Backstroke Swimming Technique - Head and Body Position

This article describes how to swim with ease and avoid breathing issues in backstroke swimming using clear explanations about head and body positioning.

Head Position

In backstroke swimming your head is aligned with your spine in a neutral position. Your face is turned upwards and you look up at the ceiling. Your chin should neither be tucked in nor extended forward.

While your body rolls from side to side towards the arm that pulls in the water, your face should always stay parallel to the water surface. Some swimmers even drill this by swimming backstroke lengths with a plastic bottle placed on their forehead.

Body Position

In backstroke swimming you float on your back in the water. Your body should be balanced, which means it should be parallel to the water surface. If this isn't the case, your hips and legs will drop and it will be difficult to keep your face above water. This in turn causes breathing issues.

Sinking hips and legs can have the following causes:

  1. You don't know how to use your lungs to keep your hips and legs up. When your lungs are filled with air, they provide buoyancy. If you then press the back of your head and your upper back in the water, your body acts as a lever where the pivot point is located in the lungs. This in turn makes your hips and legs come up. The head-lead supine balance drill has more explanations about this topic.
  2. Your body doesn't form a straight line from head to toes but is flexed at the hips. This often occurs when you use a bicycle kick rather than a supple flutter kick. Ideally your knees should only bend a little bit while flutter kicking. As explained above, if your body doesn't form a straight horizontal line, it is difficult to use it as a lever that makes your hips and legs rise close to the water surface.

Body Roll

While swimming backstroke, your body should roll between 30° and 45° from side to side. Your body should roll towards the side of your recovering arm when it is about to enter the water. This allows you to engage the larger back and chest muscles, which improves efficiency. It also puts less strain on your shoulders, preventing swimmer's shoulder.

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