Last week, I blundered upon a kick set that proved to be fun and challenging for the likes of me, that is to say, a fellow with pretty piss-poor SDKs.
The idea behind the set was to gradually build up my dolphin kicking capacity by starting out with all flutter kick and 0 dolphin kicks per length, then adding (1) dolphin kick off each wall per 50, then (2) per length per 50, then (3) per wall per 50, and so on, till I was kicking the whole thing butterfly.
This happened at the 1450 yard mark. By this point, I'd gradually worked my way up to 30 dolphin kicks (and 0 flutter kicks) per 25 to finish a set that ultimately proved 1500 yards of kicking.
I wrote about this blundering set and its aftermath two days later on my abdominal muscles in my most recent vlog entry here forums.usms.org/blog.php
Taking 30 dolphin kicks per 25, I realize, sounds pretty godawful to the natural cetaceans in our midst. Anyhow, a couple vlog readers wondered what the average number required is, so I thought I would conduct a poll.
This isn't an ordinary poll--I don't want responders to answer off the top of their heads. Rather, the next time you at practice, do this experiment and report back your actual findings.
1. Use a kick board
2. Do not use fins.
3. Conduct this experiment in a 25 yard course for consistency of replies.
4. Kick butterfly for an entire 50 without stopping. Count the number of total number of kicks you take. (I know you would take less doing actual SDKs without a board, but for this particular poll, please do it with a board on the surface.)
In my case, it took me 30 dolphin kicks down, and 30 dolphin kicks back, for the unremarkable score of 60. Please do not ask me what my time was, because I am sure it was over a minute.
And PLEASE only respond after you're tried this--do NOT go from memory or approximate what you think you should or could do. I want an accurate count!
Note: one last thing--just kick as normally as you can kick butterfly (which in my case is not that normal). No need to try for some record by gliding as far as possible after each kick; neither should you feel obligated to do millions of tiny whip like kicks, as if in imitation of your father's contribution to your begetting.
Just do it normally, or as normally as you can. I want to get an idea of what the range is.
Thanks!
For some reason, dolphin kicking with a board fatigues me or causes unknown pain that I don't know what from, so I honestly don't do it. I'll do SDK on my back, or flutter kick with a board, but that's about it for me kicking.
Just for the heck of it, I did this crazy thing today near the end of my swim.
Went 28 kicks down, 29 kicks back in :46 seconds. I'd say it was 70-80% effort.
I rarely do things I'm not interested in. I already let myself be talked into a 225 monofin for time. That should hold me for a long while.
Leslie, please do not consider this a snippy retort, but if the World Record holder in the 50 butterfly can't kick a single 50 butterfly with a board and without fins, what is this world coming to?
I am not asking you to sprint it or to try to set some sort of "fewest kicks per 50" record. Just kick a normal 50 fly with a board and no fins and count your kicks so that I can get some sort of data on what the range here is.
I understand you sprinters have a different mentality. But I can't imagine that one 50 kicked at a moderate pace after you've fully warmed up--again, not for time! just to see how many kicks it takes--is going to damage you in anyway! You have no history of herniated back disks! When you swim fly, your arms attack the water from positions much more extreme than a single 50 on kickboard could hope to simulate. You are, I think, flirting with divahood here.
If Usain Bolt were to adopt such a diva mentality, I can imagine him riding a Rascal Mobility Scooter from the locker room to the track so as to not tire his legs out or risk an ankle injury by sauntering across pavement cracks!
You can do it, Leslie!
And get Pete and Jazzhands to do it, too.
Thanks, and good day!
One other question: I agree with Leslie that using a board to kick is hard on the shoulders, and for many reasons, this seems particularly true with fly kicks. On the other hand, it's hard to really work on endurance if you are forced to hold your breath length after length doing prolonged SDKs.
Do you see any value to those of us who are trying to get better at SDKs doing sets like the one I described in my vlog (1500 mixed flutter and fly kicks with a board, gradually reducing the percentage of flutter while increasing the percentage of fly)?
And is Leslie right about fin training being the way to go here? I know fins help increase ankle flexibility, but it's so much easier to kick SDKs with fins that I wonder if I should be practicing the fin-less variety I will actually be using in competition?
If boards don't hurt your shoulders then I think it is a fine way to work on both kick power and endurance. I often switch to boards for just the reason you cite, I don't want to have to worry about the hypoxic aspect of going underwater.
If a board hurts your shoulder(s) then you have a couple options. Many advocate kicking on your back in a streamline position. Personally I dislike this solution because it takes away much of the power of the kick since too much of the "downsweep" (which is actually the upsweep when you are on your back) is lost in making waves. (Ideally when you are doing SDK you are not making any ripples in the surface water. Many people don't go deep enough for that.)
So another option is to use a snorkel and do SDKs on your front. FINIS also makes a very small triangular-shaped board that is useful for this. If the streamline position doesn't hurt your shoulders, then maybe using this board won't either. Or just do it without the board, holding a streamline.
As far as the 1500 flutter/dolphin kick suggestion: a 1500 kick of any kind sounds pretty boring to me! We do aerobic/endurance kick sets sometimes but I think our longest repeats are maybe 300s. I am a little puzzled by the need to switch between flutter and dolphin; is DK so tiring to you that you need to do this? Flutter kick is more tiring for me because they seem to depend almost exclusively on quads rather than recruiting core muscles to help.
About fins: I don't agree that fins are "THE" way to develop a fast kick, if Leslie is implying that it is the only way. That is clearly not true in my case, since I have only very rarely used fins. I know some people (besides Leslie) who use them to help build strength/power. But they hurt my knees and ankles so I don't use them.
So I am probably not the best person about fins. I would tend to think you should do some SDK'ing without them to mimic actual race conditions, as you say. And even if they didn't hurt my joints, I would find them annoying to use in short course pools since they effectively make the pools even shorter: it seems like you'd be turning all the time, and I find turning with fins to be a little bit of a pain, though I imagine you'd get good at it if you practiced it enough. If I could use them, I'd probably use them more in LCM than SCY pools.
If boards don't hurt your shoulders then I think it is a fine way to work on both kick power and endurance. I often switch to boards for just the reason you cite, I don't want to have to worry about the hypoxic aspect of going underwater.
I haven't done much kicking with boards the past couple years, but have started back with it. Even though I'm mildly anti-social at the pool, kicking on my back staring at the ceiling still gets old and I prefer to be able to look around a bit. I find if I grab the smallest board in the stack (Kiefer boards seem a touch smaller than anything else where I swim), when I kick, I can submerge the board just enough. Less shoulder strain, for me at least.
Skip
Here is a link to the FINIS board:
www.finisinc.com/.../alignment-kickboard.html
From the product description it seems like one of the purposes was specifically to put less strain on the shoulders. I still think the "incline" is probably a little greater than a normal streamline, but it is definitely less stressful on shoulder than a regular board.
Yeah, but staring at the bottom of the pool is only slightly more interesting than staring at the ceiling. :D "Look, there's a band-aid! Nice hairball near the drain!"
As far as the 1500 flutter/dolphin kick suggestion: a 1500 kick of any kind sounds pretty boring to me! We do aerobic/endurance kick sets sometimes but I think our longest repeats are maybe 300s. I am a little puzzled by the need to switch between flutter and dolphin; is DK so tiring to you that you need to do this? Flutter kick is more tiring for me because they seem to depend almost exclusively on quads rather than recruiting core muscles to help.
I didn't set out to do a 1500 kick, it just turned out that way! One of my problems with SDKs is that I don't seem to know how to recruit my core very well, and I am trying to practice this so that it makes it feel more natural. (I suspect the core cluelessness I suffer is part of the reason I can't dance, but this is only a working hypothesis.)
I also find kicking fly is much more tiring that flutter kick, and flutter kick is tiring enough. So as I wrote in my recent blog, I decided to sneak up on fly kicks by slowly adding one extra one per length each 50.
What surprised me was how ultimately this made the whole experience feel much more comfortable. Kicking 3 fly kicks per length didn't seem impossible, and it made kicking 4 doable. And from 4, going up to 5 hardly seemed an egregious punishment, and so forth. By the time I got to 30 kicks per length, my body was really used to the motion and not terribly traumatized by it.
I did fear back pain the next day, but this didn't come. Two days later, however, I had a lot of abdominal muscle pain, like I'd done a bunch of sit-ups. When I told my coach Bill about this, he said that it was because I was starting to recruit my core!
So for me, at least, it proved helpful in learning the right motion. I am still in the learning phase, so eventually, I hope to be able to do it faster.
As far as the 1500 flutter/dolphin kick suggestion: a 1500 kick of any kind sounds pretty boring to me!
About fins: I don't agree that fins are "THE" way to develop a fast kick, if Leslie is implying that it is the only way. That is clearly not true in my case, since I have only very rarely used fins. I know some people (besides Leslie) who use them to help build strength/power. But they hurt my knees and ankles so I don't use them.
I'm not sure how much benefit there is from doing 1500s kicks ... I know you were just experimenting, but still. For kicking, I would stick with shorter distances at race pace or perhaps for some kick endurance. I personally like to do either shooters on my belly to work on fly SDK or fast kicks with board & fins. The snorkel options sounds good as well.
I did not imply that fins are THE only way to develop a fast kick. I have used them to develop a fast kick, and like the power & flexibility I get from them. But Chris and Ande don't use fins and are very fast dolphin kickers. Many ways to skin a cat! You have to experiment, find what works for you and what you like to do. I happen to like fins. Throw in some ankle push ups while you're at it. :)
Oh, definitely don't put on fins and then go slow. Fins are for speed/power work for the most part.
no200fly, you of the most misleading name! Why don't you try swimming a 200 fly...
I promised myself a long time ago that I would never swim another 200 fly. I owe it to myself to keep my word.
I have always had a pretty good kick - my problem now is having the cardio to sustain it.
