As far as common errors are concerned, one of the main ones is recovering with your hands above the water. This was thought about for a long time with coaches because logically it makes sense. Why would you push your hands through water? If water has drag associated with it and resistance, why would you just take your hands up over the water? Well, what they found is for swimmers who’ve done this and they’ve done it pretty well, it’s hard to bring them up over the water and then not want to dive them down at the end of that pull. Instead of going straight, you’re spending a little bit of time recovering from the dive down to bring the hands back up and sweep them out which is an extra delay, it’s not worth the little bit less resistance you get by going through air, versus through water, but is a common error. I see this with age groupers a good bit when they drop the head too quickly. I always tell my kids that you want to have your eyes fall your hands so you don’t drop the head down until the hands start getting out of your eyesight. Some kids we have when they’re younger will come up and breathe and then we’ll try and drop their head down as their hands are still scooting away from them, they’re still pretty darn close to the body, which causes their back to have this weird arch in their arms, not to be fully straight yet, and it forces them to dive down more under the water than they would if they were to like kind of lean the body and plunge the body forward. Another common error is bringing the elbows too far back during the pull before the recovery. So, as I said before, you want to make sure you keep everything in front of you, which makes the Breaststroke pull, like the circle, kind of motion or it’s really like a triangle motion that it creates very small, which is a good thing because it keeps everything in front of you and also make sure, make sure that you are actually utilizing your chest muscles and things to stay forward versus trying to come back to then go forward. So I’m sure as coaches and swimmers Maybe you’ve tried the drill with a pool noodle under your armpit, but that’s a nice way to force the swimmer to keep their elbows in front, versus, giving them the opportunity to maybe push their elbows too far back.
