Not Improving At Swimming? You Might Be Making These 5 Mistakes

We often talk about how you should be swimming. And while you might feel your technique is perfect, you're likely making errors without realizing it. We'll cover common, overlooked mistakes and show you how to identify and fix them. The front of your stroke is heavily scrutinized because the start of your pull affects the rest of your stroke. If you try to overreach to compensate for a poor or missing catch, you create a pause in the stroke that results in a stop-start motion. This also puts extra strain on your shoulder. Trying to pull from an overextended position, exactly, and signs of overreaching often manifest as impingement-style pain in your shoulder. You may also find yourself gliding excessively at the front of your stroke. If this is exaggerated even further, it can lead to a catch-up-style stroke, letting your recovery arm catch up with your lead arm out front. To be honest, this can be quite a difficult habit to break, as it ruins your timing. Of your stroke needs attention. Start by breaking it down to one arm. To focus on continuous movement. It soon becomes obvious because you lack a second hand to master stroke's dead spot. Moving back to full stroke without using legs. Using a pull buoy encourages more continuous movement for the same reason and forces you to rely solely on your arms to maintain balance and forward momentum. Doggy paddle and water polo are great drills for this, partly because your head is up, allowing you to see exactly what's happening at the front of your stroke. But keeping your head elevated also prevents you from being able to pause, since you'll find it far too difficult. Now, the short back end is essentially the polar opposite of over-gliding. At the start of your pull, you've put in all that effort with your catch and most of your pulling motion. So don't waste it all too early by finishing your stroke too soon. Yeah, it's tricky to realize you're doing it. As you maintain a smooth stroke, hidden by a quick turnover, try brushing your leg as you finish your pull. To begin recovery, noting the point on your leg. Just place your arm by your side to check if you're exiting early and losing propulsion. If you're cutting it short, try a drill. We like the superman drill, one arm out. The other at your side, six kicks. Then swap. This forces you to finish every stroke completely. It's simple and effective because those six kicks, while your hand is at your side, reinforce the finish point and help you focus one stroke at a time. We're looking at the start of the stroke, where this problem usually begins. If your hand crosses the midline and veers to the other side, your body will start to wiggle, trying to correct the movement. Use a snorkel to swim. Keep your head still and look forward so you can track your hand crossing or, ideally, not crossing. A snorkel naturally corrects this by eliminating excess head movement. Test your stroke further by swimming one armed with eyes closed. If you veer across the lane, your entry point is off. We've made a video on snaking, so do check that out. For now, we suggest using a snorkel to swim as reducing head movement helps stop the wiggle. Heather discussed. Also, try to catch up drill, focusing on one hand, resting ahead at the start, which stops overreaching and crossing the midline. Flat body or lack of rotation often causes snaking as you overcompensate. When struggling to find your catch, you might often find if you struggle to turn your head or fail to engage those large lat muscles, it's because you're too flat. Adding rotation relieves shoulder pressure and helps at the stroke's front, making your pull more efficient. Previous drills we mentioned help, plus side-rotated kicking. Basically, you kick on your side, facing the wall or lane rope, using an exaggerated movement. So when you return to your stroke, you rotate more naturally. This issue plagues even competent swimmers and is the hardest to spot since your stroke looks good from the deck and seems efficient enough. But dropping your elbow prevents you from engaging lats, as mentioned before, and puts strain on shoulders. When using a snorkel, you can see your elbow's position, and paddles help spot errors too. If you remove the wrist strap from your paddles, they'll likely slip off. If you drop your elbow too much, we think sculling and doggy paddle are two drills that help you on keeping your elbow high and engaging the right muscles. True, self-diagnosis is tough. At best, trying it while horizontal in the water makes it even harder. If you feel you might be prone to some of these mistakes, use our self-assessment tools. And if you're lucky and have a friend with a GoPro, why not watch your stroke to see what you need to fix? Hopefully you found this video useful, so please hit the like button and subscribe to our channel.