I have trouble keep my hips high up at the water. I think it is mainly because of my kicks. My flutter kicks are also sometimes irregular such as when i kick at the right, only my right leg kicks at the right, my left leg is either dead or kicking flat. I remember hearing that when you see a swimmer high up in the water ( hips visible) , you know that guy is swimming very fast.
So i want to concentrate on my flutter kicking as it is such a HUGE factor in swimming. Now i seen some posts from internet that kick board kicking only improves endurance and not speed. Is that true or there are some drills which helps kicking?
It has taken just over 5 years (from when I began, to recently) for my flutter kicking to finally kick in, but for this to happen I had to understand some of the basic principles at work first. Maglischo (Swimming Fastest, Guidlines for Increasing propulsion and Reducing Resistance) states forward propulsion during a kick, only occurs with plantar flexion in the early portion of the downbeat (when surfaces face back), and further states "The upbeats of the front crawl flutter kick and the dolphin kick are probably not propulsive." The upbeat's purpose "is probably to position the legs to deliver propulsive force durning the next downbeat". I had to develop a new feel for the kick, and from there managed to make an improvement to my kicking speed, which sucked real bad BTW, and didn't improve no matter what I tried. After learning the physics behind it everything clicked.
I still have some kicking issues that I am addressing, but these I believe are stroke-rotation related. First issue happens on first stroke cycle at breakout, one leg kicks way out. The other time is during a breath.
Now that I wrote two off topic paragraphs, here are my 3 cents: Use kickboards when you need them, sometimes you don't, snorkels are convienient, drills like the ones PWB mentioned work excellent for me, and if you have trouble flutter kickingyou may be doing something incorrectly
It has taken just over 5 years (from when I began, to recently) for my flutter kicking to finally kick in, but for this to happen I had to understand some of the basic principles at work first. Maglischo (Swimming Fastest, Guidlines for Increasing propulsion and Reducing Resistance) states forward propulsion during a kick, only occurs with plantar flexion in the early portion of the downbeat (when surfaces face back), and further states "The upbeats of the front crawl flutter kick and the dolphin kick are probably not propulsive." The upbeat's purpose "is probably to position the legs to deliver propulsive force durning the next downbeat". I had to develop a new feel for the kick, and from there managed to make an improvement to my kicking speed, which sucked real bad BTW, and didn't improve no matter what I tried. After learning the physics behind it everything clicked.
I still have some kicking issues that I am addressing, but these I believe are stroke-rotation related. First issue happens on first stroke cycle at breakout, one leg kicks way out. The other time is during a breath.
Now that I wrote two off topic paragraphs, here are my 3 cents: Use kickboards when you need them, sometimes you don't, snorkels are convienient, drills like the ones PWB mentioned work excellent for me, and if you have trouble flutter kickingyou may be doing something incorrectly
