Common mistakes during the insweep, upsweep, and release in freestyle

This is the last post on the mistakes during the armstroke in freestyle series and it will cover the insweep, the upsweep and the release. You can find the rest posts of these series here (recovery and entry) and here (downsweep).

Common mistakes during the insweep of the armstroke in breaststroke

As you already know the armstroke of breaststroke is divided into four parts: the outsweep, the catch, the insweep, and the recovery. A few days ago I blogged on the common mistakes that swimmers tend to make during the outsweep of the armstroke (see here). Today’s post is about mistakes swimmers do and should avoid during the insweep.

The most common mistake that swimmers make during this phase of the stroke is to direct the hands forward. The forward speed of the body will drop off dramatically once swimmers begin to move the arms forward during the insweep. Consequently, they will either terminate the insweep early or they will waste time and effort performing a movement that is non propulsive. The forward and inward arm movement produces an outward and backward drag force and a forward and outward lift force. Swimmers are bound to decelerate when they sweep the hands forward during the insweep because any small forward component of force that may be produced by this direction of limb motion will be negated by the large backward component of the drag force they are also producing.