At the pool yesterday I was doing some pull sets w the buoy thing between my legs and noticed my times were not much slower on a 25y basis than I do when I add the kick. Is it safe to say my kick is my weakness or do most people do their pull sets close to their kick sets?
I also felt like I was able to do sets quicker with my br kick vs flutter kicker. I assume that is fairly common as well.
I think I am going to start doing a lot more pull sets with the buoy as I felt like it gave me the sense of what it should feel like to have a good stream line position.Be careful overusing/improperly paddles. It can lead to shoulder problems.
I'll second the Finis Positive Drive fins. I can't keep up with the long bladers but I can kick full IM sets and they can't. One of the things I really like about them is that if I kick wrong, they just slide side ways through the water and I go nowhere. The thing I dislike the most about them is that when I swim too fast, they fill with water and begin separating from my feet.
OH I wasn't going to use the paddles. Maybe i'm misunderstanding the idea of pull sets. Are they not sets where you are using a buoy and only utilizing your upper body?
In practice My pull is only a marginal amount behind my full swim times. In longer sets I tend to pull marginally faster than I swim. However, in practice, my all out fastest sprint pull time is leaps and bounds behind my fastest sprint full swim times because then and only then do I engage the size 15's. Its too tiring to kick hard during practice unless its during a kick set or a sprint. For normal "bangin-yardage" time i mostly do a lazy 2 beat crossover just to keep the ass out of the water, or grab a bouy.
So you can't really imply a weak kick just because you pull faster in practice swimming. However you have something to work on if your sprint pulls are faster or even close to your sprint times. Once you engage the legs there should be a big difference in sprint speed.
I don't use fins/paddles for pulling or otherwise.
I have a two-beat crossover kick - I have trouble trying to kick more beats per stroke because my feet still try to cross over. Do you have this problem and if so do you also have a solution?
The pull buoy likely improves your body position, bringing your hips and heels to the surface of the water, which reduces your frontal drag.
Freestyle kick is likely not propulsive, but helpful in counteracting the forces by your arms (Brooks 2000; Deschodt 2009).
Question your route of training, consider using these methods for improvement (cf. www.stack.com/.../).
I have a two-beat crossover kick - I have trouble trying to kick more beats per stroke because my feet still try to cross over. Do you have this problem and if so do you also have a solution?
Not really. Actually my problem for almost my whole swimming career not including the last few years was that I didn't kick AT ALL when i would practice unless it was a sprint or a kick set. Its only the more recent couple years that I picked up doing something, anything, with my feet during a normal pace practice swim. This has manifested itself to a 2 beat crossover because I am lazy. I can, when not so lazy, go to a normal two beat, and even a light 6 beat without any problems. My sprints though, I swear there is no connection between my feet and my arms, so it could be a 6, 7, 8, or whatever beat. I am unsure. I just kick my ass off for 22 seconds, lol.
