Personally, I think kickboards are evil, evil, evil. When I was swimming 20 years ago in high school I didn't see the point, and now that I'm 38 I still don't see the point.
Happily though, I've read in several books and seen on a few video tapes that many coaches have come around to my line of thinking, "Kickboards put you in an unnatural heads-up position, emphasize the least effective part of the stroke (the kick), and keep you from rotating."
Since I see people swim with kickboards every day I know many people disagree with me. But, there's no way they're going to change my mind. Instead - let's vote!
Parents
Former Member
I regard kickboards as evil, evil, evil. I admit that I'm prejudiced because my kick was totally corrupted by the use of a kickboard, but I think that sort of prejudice is justified.
The problems with kickboards are:
1) If you use them the natural way (i.e., leaning on the kickboard with your head out of the water), your body is in a highly unstreamlined position, which tends to conceal any lack of streamlining in your kick. In fact, the kickboard actually encourages the use of a wide, flailing kick because that is the only way to overcome your body's unstreamlined position and move at a decent speed.
2) Even if you hold the kickboard at arm's length with your face down, you still end up kicking up and down, instead of side to side (as you will be doing most of the time in freestyle or backstroke).
3) If you're balanced in the water, you don't need a kickboard to do kicking sets (and if you're not balanced, you need to forget about kicking sets and learn balance).
Of course, if you've already got kickboards, you can invariably find useful things to do with them. The kids' swim team at my Y tapes its workouts to them and props them up at the ends of the lanes so the kids can read them. I also know a coach who likes to hold them in front of the starting blocks when swimmers are doing their starts because this encourages swimmers to get their feet up. But there are other ways of doing all these things, so they aren't adequate to justify the use of kickboards.
I regard kickboards as evil, evil, evil. I admit that I'm prejudiced because my kick was totally corrupted by the use of a kickboard, but I think that sort of prejudice is justified.
The problems with kickboards are:
1) If you use them the natural way (i.e., leaning on the kickboard with your head out of the water), your body is in a highly unstreamlined position, which tends to conceal any lack of streamlining in your kick. In fact, the kickboard actually encourages the use of a wide, flailing kick because that is the only way to overcome your body's unstreamlined position and move at a decent speed.
2) Even if you hold the kickboard at arm's length with your face down, you still end up kicking up and down, instead of side to side (as you will be doing most of the time in freestyle or backstroke).
3) If you're balanced in the water, you don't need a kickboard to do kicking sets (and if you're not balanced, you need to forget about kicking sets and learn balance).
Of course, if you've already got kickboards, you can invariably find useful things to do with them. The kids' swim team at my Y tapes its workouts to them and props them up at the ends of the lanes so the kids can read them. I also know a coach who likes to hold them in front of the starting blocks when swimmers are doing their starts because this encourages swimmers to get their feet up. But there are other ways of doing all these things, so they aren't adequate to justify the use of kickboards.
