As previously stated in other posts I'm a "newer" swimmer in respect to trying to get better at it.....My kick is awful. I've been working on ankle flexibility out of the water and doing kick drills with and without fins.....although I'm getting better, I'm still so slow on the kicking.....will it eventually come around as my body gets stronger and more flexible in the right places? I've only been seriously trying for about 60 days, so I recognize more time is needed.....
in addition to your dryland ankle stretching and swimming with fins, suggest a drill where you flap your foot loosely in the water at the ankle joint, one leg at a time. Stand in the shallow end of the pool on one leg, holding onto the wall, and flap the foot of the other leg. It should feel similar to kicking with a fin on your foot but you should feel the water on top and bottom of your foot, hopefully increasing your feet’s sensitivity to the water. You could also do this with fins which will stretch your ankles even more.
Are your ankles flexible enough to point your toes?
I think increasing joint mobility and flexibility is tough and takes conscious effort so just give it time.
Well Larry...some swimmers, like me, just don't have a kick. I've been swimming for more than 40 years. At various times I have tried in vain to develope a (flutter) kick...doing drills for months, years. Even coaches can't help. In a 25m pool it takes me about three minutes to get to the other end. I'm so slow with my kick that if I'm doing a kicking drill in lane 1 or 6...as I pass a return jet...it pushes me over into the laneline.
Dan
What do you think is wrong with your kick? I tend to swim better with kicking. Without it, I feel really unbalanced. So when I have a pull buoy on, I am extremely slow and uncoordinated. But this guy in my lane, he is really slow when he swims. When he has the pull buoy on, he is extremely fast. He is also an experienced marathon swimmer. The coach said that because his legs are too deep in the water, and he ends up having to do larger kicks. The pull buoy and the salt water from his marathon swims gives his legs a lift which makes him faster.
And then there's me. I have mentioned before that if I come off a wall, go into the streamline position and kick for all I'm worth, I will come to a complete stop within 10 yards. Dead in the water. I do try to practice kick drills, but too much of it gives me muscle cramps every time. Calf, shin, toes, arch, top of foot, sometimes in multiples. I can do a decent *** stroke kick, or 25 yards on my back taking 2-3 minutes, but flutter kick goes nowhere. I joined a masters team last January, so twice a week for almost a year I have done some amount of kicking drills to no avail.
follow my advice in: Help-My-Flutter-Kick-is-Horrible!
forums.usms.org/showthread.php When I took up the challenge mentioned within this thread, my freestyle kick immediately improved, also with confirmed improvements in 50/100 swimming times. It was simple, every so often when well rested I would kick time trial 25/50/100, log, then try to improve it the next week. Started off with huge improvements, like 4 seconds/25m, then eventually was down to 10ths, at which time video was needed for accuracy. Think I’ll start another baseline to work on now to see where I'm at, and also make workouts more interesting.
Optimal kicking I learned was also about technique and movement. A good drill for this is one leg kicking while counting kick beats and adding the time for a score
I think the key is drills without fins, but with the snorkel....a big part of my issue is that I'm not getting a good feel for the water when I kick, I think that will be my focus for a couple months..
