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Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club.
The freestyle race start is really quite important because it's the very beginning of your race
and it can pretty much define the rest of your race. At times, people during their race
starts have a tendency to dive too low into the water. Going too deep can really be problematic
in the sense that everyone else will have gone say, two feet, twelve inches or twenty
four inches under the water while you are four to five feet deep. So it's really important
to concentrate on going twelve to twenty four inches under the water during your race start.
Freestyle race starts are generally performed on what we call "starting blocks" in the competitive
world. There's generally two different types of body positions. One includes placing your
feet just over the front of the starting block with your toes curled over the edge, your
head looking down at the bottom of the starting block (at your toes) and a crouched down manner
with your fingers just over the lip of the starting block. Generally, what you want to
do is have your body weight leaning back so you can sling yourself forward like a sling
shot off the starting block once that buzzer goes off. Another type of race start would
include on such as a track start, where you'll have one foot placed behind you, the other
foot curled just over the front of the curling block, and again with your hands tucked over
the starting block as well. Again, your weight will be on your back foot, waiting for that
buzzer to go off to slingshot yourself forward off the starting block into the water. Again,
it's really quite important to focus on going approximately twelve to twenty four inches
just beneath the water's surface during that start. Get a really nice streamline off the
block into the water, kick, say about five to ten yards, surface and start moving those
arms.