So I recently went to my first meet a week ago and another one this weekend (yay!). A swam a couple of different events and learned a lot of stuff from the experience. Both weekends I raced the 100 back, and I'm using the term race loosely here. I just cannot seem to crank up the speed on this stroke. I went 1:48.9 the first weekend and 1:49 this weekend. My 100 ***, easily my worst stroke, was 1:52. This doesn't really make sense to me as I've always considered my backstroke to be a lot better than my breaststroke. Ultimately my question boils down to how do you race backstroke? I'm clearly doing it wrong and it's starting to frustrate me.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated!
While both kicks may look the same there are some significant differences. Water flowing over the top of your feet in free pushes your lower body up the reverse is true in backstroke. The recovery in back kicking is into deeper and denser water making it harder on your hamstrings. A faster and shallower kick is helpful in backstroke. Kicking on your side is a good drill for backstroke as it forces you to kick in both directions with increased resistance on the kick back or recovery part.
