[Music] what's going on soon fans welcome back to whiteboard wednesday and in today's video i'm going to share with you how not to get disqualified in a swimming competition now even if you're not competing i think this video is going to be super helpful because if you're just learning the strokes having a foundation of knowing what you should be doing and what you should not be doing is truly truly important now in this video i'm going to talk about what disqualification actually means i'm going to go over a few different general rules talk about the turns and we'll go through each of the different strokes and i'll share with you some obvious and non-obvious ways that you might get disqualified in a competition now being disqualified absolutely sucks if you guys have been disqualified in a competition let me know down below in the comments and if you guys are new here welcome to my swim pro my name is coach ferris and here i help you take your swimming to the next level so if you want to swim faster and smarter than ever before make sure you subscribe to the channel like this video and like i said let me know down below in the comments if i miss any dqs or if you have been disqualified in a competition let's go ahead and get right into it first of all what does dq mean it doesn't mean we're going to dairy queen yes the ice cream is great that's not what we're talking about but dq is just short for disqualification and this means you go to a competition you go to a race and that race is now ineligible for points for placing for awards and most importantly for time this means if you go to a competition and you swim your race but you're disqualified even if you have the best race of your life and you qualify for junior nationals or nationals or the senior olympics or whatever competition you're trying to qualify for that time does not count it doesn't count towards your best time your pb and that can be crushing so let's go ahead and talk about some ways that you might get disqualified and how we don't want to do those things first things first let's talk about the general rules now these will apply for pretty much all the strokes whether it's a relay individual event it's all very very important let's talk about the false start now this is one of the most simple ways and we've seen this in swimming in track and field but basically you have the official calls you up on the blocks you're in the water for backstroke take your mark and on the beep prior to the beep there's some forward movement and so if you move before that beep or you have any flinch or hesitation it's an automatic disqualification that's what we call a false start oftentimes the false start actually doesn't make you any faster it can actually trying to anticipate the start well it will certainly hurt you and in this case you're going to get disqualified so definitely don't want to do that secondly pulling on the lane line so if you basically grab the lane line while you're swimming and you pull yourself to try and increase your propulsion propulsion it's actually going to result in a disqualification similarly to touching the bottom of the pool now if you bounce off the bottom that's a disqualification if you accidentally brush your shoulder or hit the lane line or hit the bottom of the pool especially if it's shallow and you're doing your breaststroke pull out or your dolphin kicks you can actually hit the bottom and that's okay as long as you're not using the bottom of the pool or the lane line to increase your forward propulsion and that's what the official is going to have to evaluate and finally we have the 15 meter rule so this applies to butterfly backstroke and the front crawl it does not apply to breaststroke this means off the dive and off of every time you push off the wall you can stay underwater in the streamline doing the dolphin kick up until 15 meters and if you go underwater past 15 meters and your head doesn't break the surface of the water the back of your swim cap you're disqualified so these are some general rules that you want to pay attention to now let's talk about the turns this is often where we're going to see some disqualifications and i've been an official myself on the pool deck and this is the most common place you're going to see disqualifications now the first one is for butterfly and breaststroke you'll often see a dq for a non-simultaneous touch all that means is both of your hands are hitting the wall at the exact same time if you approach the wall doing breaststroke or butterfly and you have one hand hit before the other that's an automatic disqualification this applies for any butterfly distance event any breaststroke distance event including the individual medley so if you're going from butterfly to backstroke or breaststroke to freestyle you have to touch the wall with two hands now backstroke is a tricky one there's a few different ways you could be disqualified in backstroke so when you're swimming backstroke you're obviously on your back recently and recently meaning the last 20 years you can actually rotate onto your stomach back in the day you had to touch the wall on your back and you had to turn around or do a backflip or something crazy like that now you can actually turn onto your stomach but you're allowed one freestyle stroke onto your stomach when you transition and that way you can do a flip turn on your front and you can push off on your back if you're looking at how to do a flip turn whether it's freestyle or backstroke i have a five step guide it's a great video it'll walk you through how to do a freestyle flip turn or a backstroke flip turn and we've had hundreds of thousands of people learn how to do a flip turn from that video i'll make sure it's linked down below in the description and finally for all of the strokes you have to finish with a touch so you have to finish either with your feet or your hands and what this means is if you're swimming like 100 in a 25 meter pool some part of your body has to touch the wall in freestyle if you're doing breaststroke and butterfly it has to be a two-hand touch so you can't cut the length short and only swim 22 meters or if you do a flip turn and you're just a few centimeters away from the wall we've all been there we've experienced that and you completely miss the wall that can result in disqualification because you didn't swim the full 25 meters now i know i've covered a lot already but we're going to talk about the individual strokes and some of the non-obvious ways that you might get disqualified so if you're more advanced swimmer make sure you stick around for that now if you guys are looking to take your swimming to the next level and you're looking for a personalized swim training plan make sure you download the my swim pro app we have incredible training plans workouts the intervals dynamically change based on how fast you swim and you can sync to your favorite smart watch so if you have an apple watch or you have a garmin watch you can sync have the workout right there on your wrist so i definitely recommend you check it out free download on iphone and android now let's go ahead and talk about the different strokes we're gonna go through each one of them one at a time let's start with butterfly we're gonna go im order so in butterfly your kick and your arms need to move simultaneously so unlike freestyle where you have a flutter kick in butterfly you have a dolphin kick and if your feet are separated at any point during the kick it's an automatic disqualification similarly your arms your arms have to move together over the water and over the water is very important because on the recovery meaning the part where your arm is coming back to the front your elbows have to be above the surface of the water and it pains me to watch this as a coach as an athlete or as an official to see someone swim butterfly and their arms don't get over the surface of the water not only is it disqualification but it's extremely painful to watch and to experience yourself so if you swim butterfly your arms have to come over the water and of course you have to swim on your stomach you can't swim butterfly on your side or on your back now let's talk about backstroke backstroke we're flipping it over now we're on our back and the important thing to keep in mind is when you start a backstroke race you have to have your heels under the surface of the water in fact your toes cannot grip over the gutter so depending on the pull situation you have you actually can't have your toes grab the edge and lift your body up for the start instead we have these backstroke pads that fina introduced about five to ten years ago and now you can actually put your feet a little bit higher in the water but your heels will still be underneath the surface of the water and of course in back stroke you have to stay on your back the entire time except when you're doing a backstroke turn let's talk about breaststroke now breaststroke's a little tricky because unlike the other strokes you get to do what's called a pull out off of the wall now the pull out is an area where a lot of people can actually get disqualified here's why the rules for doing a pull out are very simple you push off the wall and streamline and you're allowed one full arm pull down meaning from the streamlined position all the way down pulling your arms to where your hands pass your waist and then you're allowed one dolphin kick at any point in that whole process and then you're allowed one kick under the surface of the water and then you have to bring your hands back up in front of your body and you have to begin the stroke immediately and when i say immediately you just can't do anything else you can take as long as you want but eventually you have to start the stroke and your head has to break the surface of the water so oftentimes swimmers will at some point during this pull out do more than one dolphin kick that's one common area if you do multiple strokes underwater with your kick or your arms again you're going to get disqualified because you get one pull down one kick and one dolphin kick and it has to be initiated with your arm pulled down you can do the dolphin kick at any point during the pull out during the breaststroke stroke you have to have some part of your head break the surface of the water on every single stroke so if you think about the breaststroke stroke it's pull kick glide and as you do that motion your head has to break the surface at some point oftentimes you breathe while you're doing the arm pull so pull kick glide and you're breathing during the pull and of course your arms and legs must be moving simultaneously if your body is physically able to do that and that's just like butterfly in butterfly and breaststroke both your arms are doing the exact same thing and both your legs are doing the exact same thing the right side is symmetrical to the to the left and if you have a laser that cuts your body in half they should both look identical and when i say physically able of course if you're in a position where you only have one arm or one leg obviously you're going to have only one side doing that but if you're able bodied both sides should be absolutely symmetrical finally let's talk about freestyle now freestyle is interesting because it's called free style for reason meaning you can swim any of the strokes so a 50 freestyle event you can swim a 50 butterfly 50 backstroke and if you choose to swim an event that is not the front crawl the rules of that stroke will apply when you swim i've done this personally myself i've done plenty of races that are freestyle and i've done them breaststroke now it's courteous to tell the official that you're going to do that so that way they are aware and you are perfectly allowed to do this you will get disqualified if you change your stroke after you've already started so for example if you make up your own event and you start the 50 freestyle doing breaststroke and then you switch to butterfly and then you switch to front crawl you can't do that whatever you start the race with that's what you have to finish it with and your time will only count towards the event that you signed up for so if you sign up for a 50 freestyle and you do a breaststroke your time is still for the 50 freestyle even though you did a 50 breath stroke so keep that in mind if you're going to do that in freestyle you have to have some part of your body above the water or before the 15 meter mark which means you can push off underwater on the dive you can dolphin kick to 15 meters but then when you swim some part of your body has to always remain on top of the water and we'll get to that point in just a little bit now the final section i want to talk about are the non-obvious ways that you can get disqualified now this is really important because these are things that are not obvious you might actually not believe that these are ways that you can get disqualified but they're some of the most common ways that elite swimmers can actually get disqualified and not only like a national championship but even the olympic games and the world championships and there's a few stories behind these as well so let's go through these really quick the first one is the im order i already talked about if you substitute a stroke for free sell but here's a good one the im order is butterfly backstroke breaststroke freestyle that is the order you can't make it up the individual medley is different than the medley relay so the medley relay order starts with backstroke then breaststroke then butterfly and then freestyle a little bit different but the order is consistent and you can't change it so if you do anything other than that you're gonna get disqualified now the second bullet point is something that i've actually seen in person and you don't want to get disqualified or expelled from a competition or your next event and that is deliberately delaying the competition or misconduct so for example if you are late to the diving block or you are intentionally delaying the next heat from starting in some way or you're interfering with another swimmer you will be disqualified you can also get disqualified for misconduct so you can be treating people inappropriately you can use foul language inappropriate gestures anything like that you can get disqualified and it sucks to do that because you really didn't do anything wrong in the pool it's your actions out of the water that got you disqualified so behave yourself out there the third point is from backstroke to breath stroke in the crossover turn so if you remember in backstroke you have to remain on your back and when you transition from backstroke to breaststroke it's as if you're finishing a backstroke event this means you have to actually touch on your back so oftentimes swimmers that are at an elite level will do what's called a crossover turn when you do the crossover turn you actually lean over towards your stomach to do the turn however if you cross over past 90 degrees towards your stomach before your hand hits the wall you're going to be disqualified because you didn't actually finish the length on your back and this is one of the most common ways that swimmers get disqualified at an elite level in the individual medley the fourth is the 15 meter rule resubmersion so you're under water for 15 meters and then you pop up before that 15 meter mark and then boom you have to maintain some part of your body above the water where this happens is in backstroke on the finish so if you're swimming backstroke and you're coming into the wall and then you take a big stroke and you reach back to try and touch the wall at that point you're not really taking any more strokes and if your entire body submerges below the surface on the finish before your hand hits the wall you're disqualified because you are underwater outside of the 15 meter mark and this is also one of the most common ways that elite swimmers can actually get disqualified in a backstroke race i've seen it happen in the 50 100 and 200 it's especially common in the 50 and 100. now another tricky one is swimming the wrong stroke or the wrong relay order so you got four guys or girls or even a mixed relay of two guys two girls and they've got the relay order but then in the competition they actually swim in a different order than the names were listed on the actual heat sheet or the psych sheet or whatever sheet that you're going off of and so this is actually really challenging because you could do everything right and not break any of the swimming rules have a great time break a world record and you're disqualified because you swam in the wrong order so if sally needs to go second in the heat sheet then sally needs to swim second and if she swims third sec or fourth or first the relay is automatically disqualified and the time doesn't count for anyone which is really devastating and that's happened at the world championships and the olympic games now let's talk about swimsuits now this is something that troubles a lot of people because you think it's a swimsuit how can i get disqualified now there's certain types of material and skin coverage that are actually legal and illegal so in elite competition you can only have a swimsuit by penis standards for a guy that is below the navel and above the knee it also has to be water permeable and so you can't wear a wetsuit or a open water suit that's designed for the lake or the ocean in the pool because that is not water permeable and for the ladies and even the guys i guess the suit can't have a zipper so you can't get that added compression of having a zipper it's got to be all the spandex material and for that reason it's very important to make sure your swimsuit is actually approved for competition and you can do some research maybe we'll link something down below if you guys are interested in learning more about what gets you disqualified and not disqualified we'll link some articles and different resources for you guys to check out and further your learning now like i said if you guys have been disqualified it sucks so let me know down below in the comments we'll empathize with you if you think i missed something here on the board i'd love to hear from you guys and finally if you're not in our facebook group make sure you join the largest swimming community in the world on facebook it'll be a link down below hope to see you guys in there i'll interact and i wish you guys the best and happy swimming peace [Music]