At first I thought I liked the backstroke, but now I'm all confused about the stroke.
I started doing the stroke "not thinking about it", but now that I'm _trying_ do it right, I can't do it anymore. =)
The recovery phase is fine -- obviously, it's relatively easy. My hand is in front of me and I'm not doing anything too crazy with it.
It's the push/pull. I find it awkward to do much of anything behind my back, perhaps because of low flexibility.
During recovery, my arm stays in the vertical plane, close to my head. But once it enters the water, it tends to veer out of that plane and to the side because I can't put my arm behind my back with my palms facing my feet very easily.
Since my stroke goes out to the side a bit, it steers me off course and destabilizes me.
While writing this, I'm practicing my stroke in the air, and I just noticed that rolling into the stroke makes a HUGE difference for me.
My instructor didn't tell me to do that... I'm beginning to wonder how good she is... she's a good swimmer... effortless in the water... but she doesn't verbalize very much.
Ahh, rolling, maybe I answered my own question. My shoulders REALLY hurt when I don't roll, but when I do, it feels great. That definitely helps.
Okay, I have one more: I don't wear goggles when I swim and I find that even when I minimize the splash, I still get water in my eyes during backstroke. Should I just swim with my eyes closed, will I get used to it, or what?
Parents
Former Member
Alpha,
When I swim backstroke I try to find a place in the ceiling to try to follow, even some of us backstrokers starting to swim again can wonder around the lane a bit, until we get back into the flow. Oh, try not to let your hand slap the water, the hand should enter pinky first.
Try treading water next to the deep end or where you can still touch.
This way if you get into trouble you can get to where you can touch bottom quickly.
Oh, FYI no fog googles still fog, it was suggested to me on this board that before you get your googles wet, spit into them or some use no fog spray.
I rub it all around the inside of the goggles, dip them under the water to wet the inside and put them on, don't take them off your head until your done, you can pull them up and rest them on the top of your head, but don't take them off, until your done swimming.
I took mine off one time before I was done swimming, came back and they began to fog, lost the slime I guess.
Alpha,
When I swim backstroke I try to find a place in the ceiling to try to follow, even some of us backstrokers starting to swim again can wonder around the lane a bit, until we get back into the flow. Oh, try not to let your hand slap the water, the hand should enter pinky first.
Try treading water next to the deep end or where you can still touch.
This way if you get into trouble you can get to where you can touch bottom quickly.
Oh, FYI no fog googles still fog, it was suggested to me on this board that before you get your googles wet, spit into them or some use no fog spray.
I rub it all around the inside of the goggles, dip them under the water to wet the inside and put them on, don't take them off your head until your done, you can pull them up and rest them on the top of your head, but don't take them off, until your done swimming.
I took mine off one time before I was done swimming, came back and they began to fog, lost the slime I guess.
