Your Worst Swimming Mistake

If you didn’t learn to swim as a child, this mistake is probably holding you back. What I’m going to tell you in this blog can seriously change the way you swim. After this, you may swim faster and with less effort.

The Most Common Mistake

The most common mistake we see in our technique camps is low knees. The solution is very simple, but we hadn’t found the best way to explain it until today.

Before telling you the solution, I have to explain why this mistake is so common.

People who run or who practice cycling almost always kick with their knees too low. It is very natural for the body to want to bend at the hips to move forward faster; we do that when we run or when we want to move faster on the bike.

But in swimming, this causes a lot of frontal resistance and makes swimmers tired very quickly.

The Solution

In all the camps, we have told swimmers to stretch their hips and raise their knees. The improvements were good for the few days of the camp, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I got into the water and found an easier way to explain the solution.

The solution is not directly on the hips or knees, it is on the glutes. I tried to exaggerate the solution to see which muscles felt the most active.

I immediately felt and remembered that the glutes are responsible for extending the hips. The hamstrings also help with this action, but are a bit more difficult to activate mentally. By activating the glutes, the hips are extended, and the knees rise up.

What’s Next?

I told Mariana the advice, and the improvement was immediate. But she asked me something that you’re probably wondering too: Do I have to swim like that all the time, with the glutes activated?

Very often in swimming, we want to solve deficiencies in technique with very aggressive efforts. But most of the time, the improvements come with subtle changes in certain muscles.

So if you have the same problem and the same doubt, I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mariana: Practice exaggerating glute activation for 25 or 50 meters, then swim again, relaxing little by little.

Repeat this until you find the least amount of effort necessary to keep your knees very close to the surface of the water.

Practice it a lot because it is one of the main changes that will make you swim faster and with less effort. Then you’ll find the subtle way to also activate the hamstrings, and you’ll swim better.

Backstroke Hack

The same problem happens many times in backstroke. By having the hips bent, the knees come out of the water. The knees should never come out of the water.

So, activate the glutes on the backstroke too. This will make you swim in a smaller area.

To feel the activation of the glutes, try doing this:

Stand on one leg and bend your knees slightly. Now pull your knee back until it’s behind the other leg. That is the muscle that you should activate whenever you’re swimming.