What can go wrong during the downsweep in freestyle

Today we're going to discuss the mistakes that swimmers usually do during the downsweep in freestyle. The most common of them are to drop the elbow, to maintain the arm in an extended position, to slide the hand out to the side too much, and to slide the arm out to the side too little.

Tim Jones is the new Head of Performance Pathway for British Swimming

Tim Jones has been appointed as the Head of Performance Pathway for Swimming. Jones, a former international swimmer, have been working within the sport for more than a decade, working as Director of the High Performance as Loughborough for UK Athletics and most recently at British Gymnastics. Under his tenure British Gymnastics had its most successful cycle and the 2012 Olympic Games were the most successful ever for the sport.

Common mistakes during the recovery and entry in freestyle

As you already know the armstroke in freestyle is divided into seven parts: the entry and stretch, the downsweep, the catch, the insweep, the upsweep, the release and the recovery. Today we're going to discuss a few common mistakes that swimmers do during  the recovery and the entry. Making these adjustments is important to improve your technique. 

Swim straight in open water swimming

Learning to swim straight is a crucial aspect of open water swimming. It could shave minutes from your swim splits and without even putting on a greater effort. It can be really frustrating to find out that you spend all your time developing your swimming fitness and technique but this effort didn't pay off because you couldn't swim straight. Just consider that if you swim only 350m more during your open water race (because you couldn't swim straight) you'll end up swimming for about seven more minutes, which can make a huge difference in your performance. 

5 tips to avoid sinking legs

Dealing with sinking legs is a major challenge for beginner swimmers as it adds huge amount of drag. The extra drag from this low body position slows swimmers down dramatically and  can be really frustrating because swimmers can't enjoy this activity. The prevailing theories that begginers have on sinking legs typically revolve around: 

• I'm sinker.
• I'm a weak kicker.
• I'm not going fast enough.

AOC says no more punishment for relay team

The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) will not impose any further sanctions on the Australian men's freestyle realy swim team for the use of the sleeping medicine Stilnox in the lead up to the 2012 London Olympics.  Swimming Australia issued six swimmers fines and a form of suspended sentence when they were accused of violation an AOC ban on Stilnox. The substance had been banned by the AOC weeks before the 2012 Games over dependency fears.