Do distance swimmers spend less time w/kicking workouts

I've always had a crappy kick, and I consider myself a sprinter. I have noticed that as I forced myself to train my legs/kick more, my sprinting improved. Don't know how it's affected my distance swimming, as, well, I don't swim long distances. :D Once in a blue moon I might swim 1000yds continuously to test my counting ability…and to remind myself that I'm not a distance swimmer.

Alas, also very true. I do actually try to kick these days, though ... a big step forward for me. Patrick did have a fairly nice kick when I saw him accelerate away from me in the 3rd 100 of the 400 Free last weekend. But still...it's not a sprinters kick! :) I can kick myself when needed...but only when needed. I don't waste my time in workouts to worry about much kicking. Occasionally maybe...like when pigs fly!

I've always been a pure distance guy and will avoid kicking if at all possible. My ankles simply do not bend and I get no propulsion from flapping my feet. When we do get a kicking set, I'll cheat enough to stay with group and grimly wait until I can use my arms again.

No firm answers from anyone yet. Just speculation. Let's hear from someone who is (or was) Top Ten at BOTH the 1500 and a 50 in the same season....... Better yet: In the same meet ! An easy answer to that question would be to ask Laura Val how much she kicks, (she broke the WR in the 50 and the 1500,and all distances between, in the same race.)

No firm answers from anyone yet. Just speculation. Let's hear from someone who is (or was) Top Ten at BOTH the 1500 and a 50 in the same season....... Better yet: In the same meet ! There is no firm answer to any of these forum posts! If there was a magic formula, we'd all be doing it by now. Same for the elites. Not everyone is a foodie, not everyone can train for a living like the sponsored pros, some are still in high school, yet there are many great swimmers all in the mix. Same for masters! Nice that you brought this up - not for the thread topic, but it is a fun way to challenge oneself! It's not a meaningful goal or statistic for me, but i'll be the first to suport those that attempt something different! Whether it's the longevity, consistency, sheer number, ranking number handicap, and on and on for top tens - it is quite interesting. Here you go: #3 TT 50 free (plus 2 split requests) #10 TT 1500 free 2007 SPMA LCM champs same meet. www.spma.net/.../2007_mvn_lcm_regional_results.pdf In my case, no relevance to the issue of how much kicking for distance vs. sprinters. Ditto for multi years of top ten in 100 to 400 IM. Emphasize one, spillover benefit to other swims. For everyone else, do what you NEED to do, but only to the extent that you WANT to do. But whatever you do, you have to BELIEVE in what you are doing. I suspect our thread starter is leaning towards, Yes, D swimmers don't need to spend as much time kicking! If that is the answer you are looking for, then you've already answered it for yourself! I neither agree nor disagree, but only because I have no idea what your swimming need are. The real question is: Are the things that I AM doing the things that I SHOULD be doing to get WHERE I WANT TO BE?

But most sprinters probably don't either. You're an anomaly! It's been my observation that most masters swimmers don't like kick sets and many that do kick use it as recovery. Social kicks, etc. I haven't really noticed a sprint/distance dichotomy, but I think a lot of masters teams train at least middle distance so it's possible the lack of kicking is related to the non-sprint mindset overall...if that makes sense. I don't think it's specifically a NO Kick! mentality, it's more a Must Get In 3000 in 1 Hour! Mentality. The broad swath of non-pool competing swimmers want to get in a certain amount of distance, either because they are training for longer open water swims, or because the yardage in itself is a goal. They aren't concerned with leg strength for that last 1/100 of a second. So the workouts have tended to become more swim/pull in nature. Kicking simply takes up a lot of time. Same for drills and other sets that focus on stroke improvement. This is simply the way it is. DAMM doesn't exist so that I have people to race and do MY sets on my Quest for 23.99. There are 600+ paying members with other goals. tee hee!

It's been my observation that most masters swimmers don't like kick sets and many that do kick use it as recovery. I don't know about "like," but along the lines of your comment: I think many (most?) masters swimmers think kick sets are not useful precisely *because* they don't work them very hard. "Swim sets get the HR higher, they hurt more, so they must be better for me." It is rare to find a masters swimmer who puts the same or greater effort into a kick set that they do into a swim set. (To be fair, it is also still rare to find age-groupers who do this even with their coach exhorting them to do so.) I also think many masters swimmers simply get discouraged with a perceived lack of progress, or they think that they can never be good kickers so why bother. I can understand the feeling that the lessons of elites (or "mere" age-groupers) don't necessarily apply to masters swimmers with limited training time and reduced recovery capacity. But I also think that high-intensity kick sets can have a lot more "bang for the buck" than another swim set precisely because most masters don't do enough of them. Before doing yet another set of 10 x 100 on 1:20 (or whatever), think about doing a hard kick set instead. If you are always doing the same thing in training, your improvement will be incremental at best.

They aren't concerned with leg strength for that last 1/100 of a second. This is what I think is wrong, though. I don't think being an excellent kicker is a "cherry on top" kind of thing, I think it gives a strong advantage over a weak kicker in most events. *Certainly* that's true in my chosen events; admittedly, probably less of an advantage in distance events.

There is no firm answer to any of these forum posts That's why its a forum and not a workout where a lot of coaches wouldn't even get into a debate on this topic (that would be me)....whether you're swimming for fitness or to compete you train multiple muscle groups and energy systems. To ignore or downplay the importance of training utilizing the bodies largest muscle groups is a mistake-IMHO. The folks who I have seen that want to focus on "swimming" yardage are most often (again IMHO) the people who should most often spend more time focusing on technique and using kick sets at times for recovery and at others to maximize high intensity speed work (disclaimer, I'm an advocate of Grant Hackett's coach who felt that regardless of the distance "everything was about speed")...which AGAIN IMHO is often ignored or downplayed by the so called "distance" swimmers!

We Are U.S. Masters Swimming - Promotional Video - YouTube Beautiful images, pleasent music, powerful words. No mention of "competition......" I wonder if Masters is just "evolving" away from competition altogether ? Remember that the target audience of the video includes those for whom "competition" might have a negative connotation. Maybe that comes from their age group or college days, or maybe it's fear of the unknown. Masters meets are different, but you probably have to see one to really understand that it's very low-key, the oldest swimmers get the biggest cheers, and almost everyone is just having fun. So to me, downplaying "competition" in the video was the right call.