Kicking rhythm?

Great post vo2! Thanks for that. Last night when I was in the pool I felt like my kick was a bit better... then I got home and read this and was like... man he is right!

Thanks again, vo2 - I hear you on not just continuing to swim in order to meet a yardage goal when no longer swimming with good form. Actually, my coach, who goes by rxleakm on this site - and who I must say has helped me with my form a whole lot - just sent me a video of myself swimming towards the end of a recent practice and I looked terrible. I definitely don't want to keep ingraining that. On the other hand, I have gotten a lot of benefit in terms of sheer fitness/endurance from doing his workouts past the point where I maintain good form. But now that my mind feels reassured that my exhaustion is just a phase to get through, I'll really double down on maintaining good form - even if I can't make all my sets. What you're saying about the different kicking rates I find just fascinating. Never heard it spelled out like that - in terms of both body size and body proportions. But it sure makes a lot of sense. And the need for the kick and the stroke to work together clearly goes right along with that engaged core. I'll experiment with my kick from this point of view and see what happens.

Stand proud, swim proud. Scapulas retracted/shoulders back or simply....don't slouch. Make sure you kick from the core...not snap at the knees. Plantar flex those ankles. The abdominal group you want to feel is the transverse abdominus, NOT the rectus abdominus. Rectus is the 6 pack ab group, transverse is the deep spinal stabilizing group. When you are reaching for something on a shelf that stays just out of reach, stretch stretch strech.....still can't reach it. That is what you want to feel. vo2, really interesting descriptions of how kicking, body position and your core need to work together to swim efficiently. Do you have any references (books, articles, other posts maybe?) for more info about it? When I was swimming today I thought about the "stretch" you described, and I just don't know what to do to do it, or even if I'm already there. My background is ~8 years competitive swimming when I was a kid, burn out, 30+ years of no serious swimming, now back to it and loving it for over a year. If I am doing what you're describing, how would I know? BTW I'm another 5'4" 2 beat kicker. If I rev it up to a 6 beat kick I tend to pause every stoke cycle. Thanks!

That's a tough one too. My coach and I both like a 6 beat for me. I'm 6'1" and fairly proportionate limb wise and a 6 beat gives me my best rhythm and keeps any pauses/gliding out of my stroke. A 2 beat feels nice for sure, but at my height/limb length to sync up to a 2 beat gets me a to very slow stroke rate which I don't want. My best times, given appropriate fitness, come with mid 60's stroke rate for say a 200. There is a woman at theMasters group who uses a 2 beat, punchy stroke rate incredibly well, but she is about 5'4". Huge difference b/c her all day normal stroke rate never drops under 90. Now some might say 'why not just ramp up the stroke rate and let the kick do what it does?'. For me it's all about making sure the stroke and kick are in harmony. So, when I want to speed up my pace I rotate my body faster. The way I rotate my body faster is to create more torque in the core and I do that by speeding up my kick. Make sense? If you just start pulling harder and ignore what's going on from the core down then you are most likely losing that connection 'down there'. A 4 beat can work for sure if you can get the rhythm down. A 6 is just what works for me at all stroke rates and doesn't require me to be 'on' that day to make it work. From stroke 1 the rhythm is there. I will say I had an epic kick fail at practice last night though I was disappointed in myself. Got sloppy mentally and let myself slide back into old habits. No soup for me!

vo2 - great posts! Concrete with a little bit of humor mixed in, a really nice read. Like Greg, I'm trying to over come years of bad form and a body that seems to like change less and less : ). As I stretch my stroke out I feel my core getting more engaged, just need to keep at it and build some endurance. There are moments that I feel everything come together and it is almost a reaction of 'whoa, that is fast!'. Looking forward to more stroke improvements.

In addition to kicking from center of balance, ankle flexibility seems paramount to kicking fast. Seems the foot's limited range of propulsive ability is outside the natural range of movement.

www.youtube.com/watch vo2-that video is great! I get it now. The center line of Jono Van Hazel's head and torso are a fixed pivot point. His kick, arm stoke and body rotation happen smoothy and in precise co-ordinated timing "around" them. You're right, it's all connected. And he makes it look so effortless. His body position is so perfect that it looks faked. Oh, and he looks relaxed too. Genius!

Greg and Jan As far as the limb length/stroke rate goes, kicking too.....nothing is cast in stone. You just have to experiment and see what works best for you. I simply found that a tiny six beat flutter gave me better rhythm than a 2 beat. Couple that with the fact that in order to sync catch/pull with each kick on a 2 beat I experienced pauses/gaps. Well, 6 beat won. I'm a huge advocate of not having pauses and gaps in the stroke or too much catch up is a another way to put it. All this gets really koRnfeWsing b/c it's all connected. Let me sum up my conversion and I will leave it be. I used to have tons of catch up in my stroke with little or no kick so each cycle was akin to accelerate.....decelerate....accelerate.....decelerate. That is a very exhausting and inefficient way to swim. For decades I was stuck in a speed rut where I couldn't get any faster and this was the reason. So, in order to make sure I was applying at least some propulsion almost all the time I filled in those gaps with a 6 beat kick and taking some of the catch up out of my stroke. If you want to watch a guy who perhaps does this as well as anyone I have ever seen watch this clip. Guy is an Aussie Olympian and if you play/pause his stroke you can nary find a moment he isn't propelling himself. Zero gaps. Jan no books, but hopefully seeing this guy in action will show you what I'm trying to articulate. He certainly has some front quadrant characteristics, but it's not a stroke saddled with decelerating/accelerating. Watch the entire vid and you can see how his 6 beat is present throughout, every angle it's clear. Hope this helps, sorry for the tangents, but it's all interconnected and you can't talk about one and not the other! www.youtube.com/watch

This whole "core engagement" issue is clearly so essential - but so darn tricky! As JanSwim asks vo2, "If I am doing what you are describing, how would I know?" That's just it. If you don't know what an engaged core feels like, how do you know whether you are doing it or not? Reminds me of how I did yoga for years with zero core engagement - and never had the slightest inkling that there was anything missing there. And never did a yoga teacher point this out to me. When I got back into swimming in 2006 or so, I used the Total Immersion book, which talks very explicitly about engaging your core; but still, I had no idea whether I was doing it or not. For years, I thought I was, but really wasn't. Bit by bit, I may be starting to catch on, finally. It feels like it. But who knows? Maybe I'm still nowhere near really getting it?? Seems that for those lucky people who have always engaged their core naturally - the "natural athletes" who probably go on to become the yoga teachers and super-fast swimmers and so on - it is so automatic to them that they can't even imagine the degree to which some of us are not doing it and the struggle we have to go through to do what comes so naturally to them. So maybe this doesn't get talked about and emphasized enough for some of us for whom this is the "core" issue, so to speak. But hey - this is what makes learning to swim well such an interesting adventure! And this is why I am so appreciative of all the little clues, suggestions, hints, tips, and encouragements I pick up from here and elsewhere - like those by vo2, Beards247, my coach, videos like the one suggested above, etc.

Greg as far as what an engaged core feels like. I can only relay how it feels to me. This assumed you are adept at ground based sports and understand a bit of kinesiology and the principles of how the body creates, stores and delivers energy in sport. I think most of us do even if we can't articulate it. As a pitcher I understood how I created torque by anchoring my feet into the ground, resisting against it and counter rotating my core to generate torque. The arm is very passive at this stage and is along for the ride. It's the tip of the whip for lack of a better term. By generating hip speed and uncoiling that tension in the core it's transmitted up the body...UP the body from the ground up....and culminates it's move by holding that arm in place and continuing to rotate the hips until there is no way to stop the momentum. THIS is when the arm receives all that energy and the pitch is delivered. Notice I said UP. That is how you create torque from the core. So, if you can start to think of the stroke as not beginning from the arms and working it's way down that might help you get the feeling. Doesn't matter if it's hitting a golf ball, throwing a baseball.....these actions are done from the ground up if done properly. Watch a youtube vid of a pitcher in slow motion with play/pause. Hard part is we are face down in the water, but the idea is the same. Take that feeling and try to feel the same muscles activating in the water:)