Do distance swimmers spend less time w/kicking workouts
Former Member
Just curious if sprinters spend more time kicking as a percentage of their overall workouts compared to distance swimmers? Can and do distance swimmers have to spend less time?
Former Member
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.)
I think, if you are going to do a comparative analysis, you want someone who was a TT sprinter (or distance) in one season, switched focus and was TT
in the new discipline. You cannot train for distance and sprint in the same season. Laura's feat is because she is a BA, not because she trained for the 50 and 1500 (which isn't possible).
I was TT in the 50 6-7 years ago, switched disciplines completely and was TT in the 1500 last year. I was not talented enough so that I could have made TT in the 1500 6-7 years ago and I certainly could not put up a TT time in the 50 now.
In short I kick less now than before. I don't think I can now kick in yards what I kicked in meters 6 years ago even though my overall conditioning is better. Mostly because Kirk is right, I try and squeeze XXX yards into XXX minutes and know that I can only do it if I don't kick (yesterday I did a 400 warmup and 6x600s. Probably a stupid set now that I think about it). Maybe a kicking boot camp is in order. I really like this idea.
This is a good thread. It exposed a couple of the weaknesses in my own training...
"Kicking?" asked a perplexed d-person, "Is that what you do to get an open water drafter off your tail?"
"No, no, no," explained the sprinter, "Kicking is actually part of freestyle, a key propulsive force where you move your legs and feet up and down, stirring up the water and pushing your body forward."
"You must be joking," sighed the d-person as they pushed off for another set of 15 x 500 on 0:05 rest, laughing yet again at the crazy, half-baked ideas those wacky sprinters come up with.
This made my day. I sometimes have to actually remind myself to kick when swimming freestyle. :)
What do you think? Are you starting to kick faster without fins or not? I'd say if your kick times are not improving then maybe the Zoomers aren't helping.
Good question! Depends on the day, of course - But generally, fly kick has not improved (was always fairly good) but flutter most definitely has improved. (BTW - that question was way too insightful - wasn't sure I was up to really examining myself!) However, I have also noticed that my fly itself (whole stroke) definitely improves when I do a few fly drills w/zoomers prior to a fly set. Not so with freestyle.
I believe what lefty probably means is that it is not possible to simultaneously fully optimize (ie, reach max potential in) both 50 and 1500, not that a talented swimmer can't have very respectable times in both. I agree with him.
That is exactly what I meant, thanks for clarifying.
I always think of kick improvement as the triple bang (or more!). You get faster by better kick alone. Then your body is ever so slightly better aligned, so you have less resistance. Then, because you are better aligned and have less resistance, you can more fully activate your arms and then your arms are actually "stronger" without lifting any more weight or doing more yardarge! Last, with a better kick & core, you use K&C to kick, balance, and breath rather than your arms, at least incrementally more, so that also frees up your arms to do more of just one thing - pulling you through the water rather than balance & breathing. It's like getting stronger arms just by improving your kick!
I've been playing around with trying to keep a six-beat kick throughout my workout, and I'm starting to come to this view myself. My body position and overall stroke feels much better, although at first it felt quite funny (it seemed as though I had to slow my arms down a bit). It doesn't even have to be a very hard kick to get some benefit from it. But I am really starting to think that in addition to kicking sets, one has to practice kicking while swimming. You can't simply do kicking sets and hope that it will translate to your swimming.
There is an interesting article on developing distance swimmers in the new issue of "American Swimming."The author ,Richard Shepard opines that while one probably can't win the Olympics without a 6 beat kick that some kids are never going to be as fast with a 6 beat kick as with a 2 beat kick and that you are doing them a disservice to force them into a 6 beat kick.
