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).

The most frequent errors that swimmers make during the insweep are to scull the arm in, and bring the arm in too little or under the body too much.

• When swimmers scull their arm in, they fail to maximize their propulsive force because they use a smaller surface area for moving water back, and they use smaller muscle groups for the application of this force. Many swimmers initiate the insweep by flexing the arm at the elbow and sliding the forearm and hand almost directly in to the midline of the body. This will give them less propulsive force than by pushing back against the water with a flexed arm during the insweep. 
• When swimmers bring their arm in too little during the insweep they can shorten the propulsive phase of the armstroke. On the other hand, when they bring the arm in too much during the same phase of the armstroke, the body may create excessive dise ward forces that will reduce the amount of propulsive force and cause swimmers to move from side to side.

Last but not least we have the mistakes swimmers usually do during the upsweep and the release. These could either be extending the arm too rapidly at the elbow and trying to push against the water until the hand reaches the surface, and not streamlining the hand as it travels the last few centimeters to the surface.

• When swimmers extend and push the arm forcefully against the water until the hand and forearm reach the surface, they end up decelerating their forward speed and pulling the hips and legs down because they are pushing up instead of back against the water with the underside of the arm. Swimmers should keep the arm flexed with the palm and the underside of the forearm facing back throughout the propulsive phase of the upsweep. At the same time, swimmers should stop pushing back against the water when the arm begins to move forward into the recovery or they lose a backward orientation with the forearm.
• The most common mistake swimmers make during the release and the first part of the recovery is not streamlining the hand as it travels the last few centimeters to the surface before leaving the water. This mistake causes an increase of interference drag as they pull the hand up through the water with the broad surface of the palm facing up. After the release, swimmers need to bring the hand out of the water with the small edges of the fingers facing up to reduce the surface area and, consequently, the resistive drag they encounter.

Image source: [1]