Yesterday a friend of mine who has just started lifting weights mentioned that she was surprised at what little upper body strength she had. That started me thinking about my upper body vs lower body strength.
I can just zip right through pull sets where as I feel as if I'm trudging through kick sets. I realize that means my kick is weak. (I've had coaches watch my kick to make sure I'm kicking correctly and I always throw in some kick sets even if there isn't one in the workout)
Anyway, my question is: What is typical for most swimmers, is pulling generally faster than kicking? In other word, should the time for, say 100m of pulling, be faster than 100m of kicking, or vice versa, or should they be about equal?
This has to do with weak abdominals. Your back muscles are overactive and your abs are under active. doing some core strengthening will help. As for board vs. no board, no bord is better for putting you in a swimming position therefore training like you swim but I like to mix it up a bit and do a little of both.
laineybug -- My pull is faster. Way faster. Kicking alone for me is about half the speed of pulling. (Note: I have a lousy kick, and I only kick enough on my overall stroke to keep my tail end from sinking.) This has made kicking to be a very discouraging exercise for me, and so for years (decades) I have eschewed kicking.
BUT! If I do kicking sets with fins (like zoomers) I can actually approach my normal swimming pace. (I can sustain 500 yards at 1:30 per 100 yards.) Since discovering this, I have been able to increase the amount of kicking I do in my workouts to the point that I do 1500 yards of kicking 3x per week. It is starting to show in muscle tone on my legs which have been pencil-thin sticks all my life. Yet I still have not been able to incorporate more kick into my overall stroke, and kicking without fins is slow as ever.
As for back pain, I have learned to work through that. Actually if you read in swimming magazines they say not to use a kickboard because the curge in your back to hold your head up does put a lot of strain on your back. They say to put your hands in front of your head and put your face in the water, and come up for breath as needed. Even better, do your kicking ON YOUR SIDE with your lower arm extended in front and you top arm down to your side. Then to breathe all you have to do is tip your face up slightly and voila! Having said that, I admit that I haven't mastered that at all. I still use the kickboard in the traditional manner. And if I'm not careful I start feeling strain in my lower back after 500-1000 yards. So what I do is simply keep my face in the water and lift my head only to take a breath (and on turns.) If I start needing to pant, putting my face in the water is no longer practical, and then I just hold my head up. If I mix these up, I find that the strain on my lower back is significantly less, and I rarely get a cramp or spasm in my back, nor does my back feel weak afterwards.
Originally posted by laineybug
What is typical for most swimmers, is pulling generally faster than kicking? In other word, should the time for, say 100m of pulling, be faster than 100m of kicking, or vice versa, or should they be about equal?
Good breaststrokers normally get most of their propulsion from their kick. Those who are physiologically challenged with regard to breaststroke kicking tend to balance propulsion between the arm stroke and the kick.
In the other strokes, the arm pull is a lot more propulsive than the kick. In fact, Doc Counsilman did an experiment a number of years ago in which he build a mechanism that allowed him to tow swimmers in a gliding position, both with and without kicking. By measuring the tension on the line, he could determine how much their kick was contributing to their propulsion at different speeds. He found that at speeds over 5 feet per second (that's 30 seconds for 50 yards), kicking didn't reduce the tension on the line at all, and in some cases it actually increased it. The conclusion was that kicking is not a significant source of direct propulsion when your 50y time goes under 30 seconds.
Of course, kicking does provide an important aid to your body roll, which can, in turn, help to power your stroke.
You could try this drill for building up your core body strength.
With fins try dolphin kick on your back for 1 length, hands in streamline, the n 25 of fly kick on 1 side, then 25m on your back with hands above your head ( in the air), 25m on other side fly kick, 25 on back, both hands in airalternating from behind head to at side.
Rest a lot !, Then with fins 50m, fly kick 6 on back, 6 on side, 6 on back, 6 on side, REST.
Then repeat above but with 3 kicks in each position REST
Then, and this is the good one, get some transvers ab work, ON back with fins fly kick 50m, keep back flatish on the water and kick 1 to side, 1 straight up, 1 to other side, 1 straight up. It is the trunk rotation during between the kicks that is so great. REST
Do this often enough and you will have abs of steel, women will swoon at your feet and your life will change.
:D
Originally posted by Gareth Eckley
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Do this often enough and you will have abs of steel, women will swoon at your feet and your life will change.
:D
Wow, that is a really big gaurantee!:)
I think I heard this gaurantee from an animal .... I think it may have been a moose.... he was selling me some kind of shampoo.....
Originally posted by Gareth Eckley
Do this often enough and you will have abs of steel, women will swoon at your feet and your life will change.
:D
That's nice, but why would I want women to swoon at my feet?
Lainey
Pulling should, unless there is a problem, always be quicker than kicking. When pulling, you are lifting the legs with a buoy, therefore reducing the effort to move them along and enabling yourself to concentrate on stroking.
When kicking you lose your arms completely and use only your legs to propel your whole body through the water.
I don't think that is such a good idea. The whole point of a pull set is to work on stroke mechanics (and, for me, to rest!). By dragging your dangling feet without any aid, I wonder if you aren't doing more damage to your stroke than good.
