Backstroke Technique for High School Swimmers

Written by Candice Darr · Approved by Melanie Margalis Fink · Updated Aug 18, 2026 · 8 min read

Nobody swims backstroke by accident. Most kids get assigned to it their first season, decide they hate not being able to see the wall, and then quit on it – or else turn it into their best event by December.

The difference between those two outcomes usually isn't talent. It's whether someone showed them the handful of technical pieces that make backstroke feel controlled instead of chaotic.

This guide walks through the technical pieces, including body position, kick, pull, rotation, breathing, and the flags that keep you from finding the wall with your skull.

It’s written to your swimmer directly, in language they can use at the next practice, and built for you to read alongside them. You don’t need to coach the stroke, just recognize these pieces so it makes sense when your swimmer talks about it on the drive home.

Swimmer, the rest of this is for you.

Backstroke body position: the flat line that makes everything else work

Start here, because nothing downstream works if this is wrong. U.S. Masters Swimming's backstroke guide describes the target position as your body resting on the surface in one line, with your head, hips, and feet all at the waterline. That flat line minimizes the resistance you create moving through the water.

Backstroke happens in reverse compared to freestyle in a real, physical sense. Swimming on your back stresses muscles and joints in a novel direction, rather than repeating the same overhead pattern every other stroke demands. That’s one reason coaches like keeping backstroke in the rotation even for swimmers who specialize elsewhere.

The position breaks down fastest around the head. If you lift your chin to check the ceiling or avoid water on your face, your hips will drop immediately, because your whole body pivots around wherever your head sits.

The kick: it starts at the hip, not the knee

Backstroke uses an alternating flutter kick with a tight range of motion and a fast rate. Per U.S. Masters Swimming (USMS), most swimmers use a standard rhythm of three kicks for every arm stroke. The kick should feel small and quick, with slightly bent knees and floppy, relaxed ankles.

The single biggest kick fault, according to USMS, is kicking from the knee instead of the hip. As seen from the deck, a swimmer whose knees pop up above the surface with every kick is bending from the knee joint and losing power that should come from a straighter leg driven at the hip.

Fixing this rarely requires more strength. It requires slowing the kick down enough to feel where the motion is actually starting.

A good check is a kick-only set on your back with your arms at your sides, watching for bubbles at your knees. If your knees break the surface, you’re kicking from the wrong joint. Slow down until the kick starts at your hip and your knees stay under, then build speed back up without losing that feeling.

Backstroke pull technique: avoid both extremes

The pull is your main source of propulsion in backstroke.

Most pull problems exist at one of two extremes:

Pull with a completely straight arm and you lose power, because a straight arm can't generate the same pushing force through the full range of motion.

Overbend the elbow instead and you shrink the surface area you're pressing against the water, which costs you the opposite way.

USMS notes that elite backstrokers vary in exactly how bent their elbow is and how close their hand travels to their body. There's no single number that's correct for every swimmer. What matters is finding the bend that lets you push the most water with the most power, and sticking with it long enough to build strength in that specific motion.

The backstroke pull places real stress on the inside of the elbow. Keep that in mind if that joint starts to bark during a heavy training block.

Body rotation: the piece that unlocks your shoulders

Rotation is where a lot of backstroke technique either clicks or stays stuck. Your body should roll from side to side as you swim, rotating down toward whichever arm is pulling and away from whichever arm is recovering.

USMS is direct about why this matters. Your shoulder only has so much natural range of motion, and rotating your body effectively extends that range, letting your arm recover over the water and pull underwater without straining a joint that was never built to do all that work on its own.

Swim backstroke flat, without rotating, and recovery gets dramatically harder. Your arm has to clear the water using shoulder mobility alone instead of body rotation helping it along. That’s a losing trade for almost every swimmer.

How much rotation is right varies by individual shoulder mobility, so don't force a rotation angle that feels wrong. Experiment within a real range and let your own mobility set the limit.

Backstroke breathing: the trap nobody warns you about

An odd fact about backstroke swimming is that even though your face is out of the water for the entire race, breathing can still wreck your stroke. Because you technically can breathe whenever you want, plenty of swimmers end up breathing far too often, especially as fatigue sets in and the temptation to gulp air on every stroke grows.

USMS notes this can tip into something close to hyperventilation, which raises stress and breaks your rhythm rather than helping it.

The fix is establishing a pattern and sticking to it, tied to your arm recovery instead of your discomfort. Some swimmers breathe every time the right arm recovers. Others tie it to the left, or breathe every second or third stroke.

The specific pattern matters far less than picking one and holding it, even when the urge to breathe more shows up mid-race.

Reading the flags instead of guessing at the wall

Backstroke is the only stroke where you genuinely can't see where you're going, which is exactly why backstroke flags exist. Hanging roughly 6 to 9 feet above the surface, the flags are strung 5 yards from the wall in a short-course-yards pool, and 5 meters from the wall in short-course-meters or long-course-meters pools.

Learning to use them starts with establishing a stroke count based on how many strokes it takes from the moment you pass under the flags to the moment you reach the wall. Once you know that number at your race pace, you can start your flip-turn rollover one stroke earlier than your normal count (the roll itself covers some of that remaining distance).

Of course, the count shifts slightly based on how fast you're actually swimming that day, which means it takes real repetition before it becomes reliable. Over time, most swimmers rely less on the literal count and more on a feel for the wall built from hundreds of reps. *

What the rulebook says about your start, turn, and finish

A few backstroke-specific rules shape technique, whether you think about them or not. USA Swimming's official rules require:

Swimmers must line up in the water facing the starting end with both hands on the gutter or the starting grips. Standing on or bending your toes over the gutter lip before the start isn't allowed.

Once you're racing, you can be fully submerged for up to 15 meters after the start or after each turn, as long as your head breaks the surface by that mark.

At the wall, the rules permit your shoulders to turn past vertical toward the breast during the turn, after which one continuous single-arm pull or one continuous simultaneous double-arm pull can initiate the roll.

You must return to a position on your back before leaving the wall. The finish has to happen while you're on your back, too.

None of this should change how you train day to day, but it explains why coaches drill the open turn as its own skill rather than assuming it'll just happen.

Frequently asked questions

What is the correct technique for backstroke?

It comes down to five pieces that work together, including a flat horizontal body line, an alternating flutter kick that starts at the hip, a pull where your hand and forearm face backward early, side-to-side body rotation, and timing that syncs one arm stroke to three kicks per leg.

Why do I sink in backstroke?

Almost always it's the head. Lifting your chin to keep water off your face drops your hips immediately. Keep your head still and let your ears sit at the waterline instead.

How do backstroke flags work?

The flags hang 5 yards or 5 meters from each wall, depending on the course, so you can judge the wall without looking at it. Count your strokes from the moment your hand passes under the flags to the moment you touch, and use that count every time you approach the wall at race pace.

How many kicks per stroke in backstroke?

Three kicks for every arm stroke is the standard cycle, so a complete cycle covering both arms includes six kicks total. Sprinters often push the kick rate higher underwater off the walls, where the kick becomes a bigger share of total propulsion.

Is backstroke breathing different from freestyle?

Your face never goes underwater in backstroke, so breathing feels less urgent and that's exactly the trap. Swimmers who breathe on impulse instead of on a set pattern tend to overbreathe and rattle their own rhythm. Tie each breath to a specific arm recovery, left or right, and keep it there.

Your swimmer’s next step

Backstroke rewards patience more than raw power. Once your swimmer gets the flat body line and the hip-driven kick right, the pull and rotation tend to follow, because the body finally has the platform to execute them. The place to start is a slow kick-only set, checking the knees before worrying about anything else on this list. *

If backstroke is one leg of a bigger event lineup for you, how to swim the individual medley covers how backstroke technique fits alongside the other three strokes in race order.

If freestyle is where you're spending most of your yardage, fixing the big mistakes in freestyle technique breaks down the same kind of technical detail for that stroke.

For the full picture of how a swimming season and its events fit together, High School Swimming: A Complete Guide for Parents is the place to start.

This article is for general information about stroke mechanics. It is not medical advice. If you experience persistent knee, shoulder, or joint pain, talk to a sports medicine provider rather than training through it.

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