9. Video Example – Hips At Surface

Video Transcription: What do we think here? Linda, I do agree with that. Sometimes they do take a wider stance, but the reality is, is you’re still looking for the balance of like power production and then also traction. The wider the squat or the Wider the knees, the harder it is to get into a deeper squat, which would directly affect a swimmer’s ability to create a lot of power. So You know, like you’ve got the ideal, right, the ideal is to not have a slippery wall. But if for some reason they do then you would make adjustments. Make sure that the people you are working with, or are seeing do this, know what to do when they’re in a scenario that’s not like that. There is no hip lift in this one for sure. 

This is the closest one to being right. So, you know feet are more hip width distance apart. They’re not as wide as the girl before as she pulls up, she pulls up, but she keeps your bum in the water. As she pushes back, she does lose a little bit of that, like her bum goes further back into the water, then she does try. See how those hips are in front of the feet. She is attempting to get into that rainbow position here. She just doesn’t drop her bum as much as the girl before did. She pushes off and still kind of has a little bit of an arch, but it’s not enough Arch to get those hips up. 

For practical purposes, this Backstroke Start is the closest one that we have to being correct out of all the ones that we’ve watched. It’s just from above water when you see this you would still see the hips trailing on the surface of the water and you wouldn’t see a full rainbow because the hips still stay under the water.