Breaststroke underwater pullout sequence

The underwater pullout sequence is a great equalizer of breastsroke races and it's used during the breaststroke send away (breast start, breast to breast turn and back to breast turn in IM). Even poor breaststrokers who streamline well, have a strong butterfly pull and kick, and can fake a single compact breaststroke kick can compete on the walls with the fastest swimmers, and they will have eight to nine fewer meters to swim.

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Tips for perfect open turns

We have already discussed the key points of the freestyle (here) and backstroke (here) turns. So, today we are going to give some tips for a perfect open turn. There are five variations of open turns, four of which are similar: breast to breast, fly to fly, and the individual medley (IM) transition turns of fly to back, and breast to free. The fifth kind, the back to breast IM transition turn, is performed differently and will be analyzed in an another post. 

When doing these four variations of an open turn keep in mind the following:

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FINIS partners with Under Armour

A couple of weeks old news but really interesting and very good for swimming and swimming industry. FINIS partners with Under Armour, read the statement from the FINIS' blog.

FINIS, a world leader in technical swimming products announces a partnership with Under Armour Inc., an innovative performance brand specializing in apparel, footwear and accessories accross numerous sports. Moving forward, all FINIS teams will be able to utilize the full range of Under Armour's product offering for their team members, to keep them comfortable on the deck and for training out of the pool.

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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).

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Types of strength for swimmers

Swimming is not a sport that gives immediate gratification. When a person comes into competitive swimming without a base of athleticism, a great deal of time and energy must be devoted to building that base, to prepare the person to take on the rigors of training for competitive swimming. In contrast, when these qualities are already present, a swimmer is able to excel faster. A swimmer who comes into swimming with an athletic base in place is able to concentrate on developing solid swimming skills, gaining swimming experience, and swimming fast.

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The Russian Rocket

Aleksandr (Alexander) Popov, known by a variety of nicknames - "Sasha", "The Russian rocket","Ice Man", and "Big Dog"- is a Russian former Olympic gold medalist swimmer and he is regarded as one of the greatest sprint freestyle swimmers of all time. Popov took up swimming at the age of eight at the Children and Youth Sports School, and at that time, he was afraid of water, but his father insisted on him taking swimming lessons. Popoc started out as a backstroke swimmer and switched to freestyle only in 1990 when he joined Gennadi Touretski's squad. He later moved from Russia to Australia to be with his coach.

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Sunday's motivational quote 6