Enough with the SDK!

If you suck at it, don't use it. To kindly mimic Ande's style I say a better statement would read: "If you suck at it, don't use it... yet. You gotta work at the stuff you're bad at (which I know Ande said)...that's the low hanging fruit.You can usually improve just by thought alone.Even if you don't get great you'll get better!Be open to anything, to try everything, find what works for you and your body. :2cents:

Apparently, I have virtually no core muscles, but I've read about, them so I do believe they exist :). Right now, my attempts at SDK probably just look like small convulsions and they don't really feel like they are helping me get or maintain much forward movement/momentum. I'm also a weak kicker - probably due to the same lack of core strength. But watching videos of olympic swimmers do SDKs - and maybe even more so, watching rxleakem turbo propel himself down the pool with them in real life - makes me think they're worth working on. One poster (maybe it was on another SDK thread) says that SDKs are more tiring than swimming. But my understanding is that core muscles, when you've developed them, are less prone to tiring than arm and leg muscles. If this is so, SDKs seem like they'd be worth doing just to help the arms and legs last a bit longer. But maybe my understanding is wrong. Anyways, I will try working on the SDKs and see what happens. Anyone know a type of core strengthening exercise that would be particularly good as supplementary help with SDKs (and/or kicking)?

Apparently, I have virtually no core muscles, but I've read about them, so I do believe they exist :) :joker: Wouldn't crunches, etc. help the core muscles? **My question to all of you who have monofins - lets say I don't want to make the investment (kinda like should I buy that exercise machine, just to see it collect dust in the family room?) - if I take my regular old fins, and just do some serious shooters with those on, will that help my core as much? I'm thinking, no, because the monofin is so much stiffer, thus requiring more effort.

One thing that I have been doing to help build a stronger core is to swim or kick an easy 50 but when i get to the flags before the turn, I stop and then start doing vertical dolphin kicks for about 20 seconds, and then repeat it. As I got better, I started raising my hands out of the water while doing the doplhin kicking and it makes it so much harder. I also noticed that after I started doing this, my SDK's were much easier and I went much faster. I can now SDK a 25 in less than 15 seconds. before, it was 18.

... when i get to the flags before the turn, I stop and then start doing vertical dolphin kicks for about 20 seconds... Good for your core and it scares the bejesus out of the noodlers!

I've experimented with both and found really no major difference except perhaps I'm more likely to do mini rapid kicks in a 50 than in a 100 due to adrenaline. I've experimented with both and I haven't found much of a difference either. The key is to be kicking at max intensity with both sides of the feet.

Do many of our expert sdker's find it better to take mini-rapid kicks or bigger kick amplitiude? I've experimented with both and found really no major difference except perhaps I'm more likely to do mini rapid kicks in a 50 than in a 100 due to adrenaline.

Haha, and we know that we love to do that. Thankfully at my pool, teh noodlers are only there for an hour a day. Good for your core and it scares the bejesus out of the noodlers!

Now that I think about it... I did get my best 100 free time when I focused solely on fast flip turns and a powerful and fast SDK. Took a lot of adrenaline since it was my high school state swim meet to do it tho :D But hey, best time!

:joker: Wouldn't crunches, etc. help the core muscles? **My question to all of you who have monofins - lets say I don't want to make the investment (kinda like should I buy that exercise machine, just to see it collect dust in the family room?) - if I take my regular old fins, and just do some serious shooters with those on, will that help my core as much? I'm thinking, no, because the monofin is so much stiffer, thus requiring more effort. I got a monofin. It dragged me all over the pool. It's a fun instrument.