Help My Flutter Kick is Horrible!

Hi Not Very Fast, great to hear from you fins ARE for wimps, though they might be good for helping beginners learn how to kick 2:09 in the 200 LCM fr is pretty decent, and so is 20 for a 25 m k, test 25's without any SDKs I'm sure you can get yours down to 16 or 17 good luck with your kicking when I was in college I could do 8 x 100 k LCM on 1:30 I'm pretty sure that now I could make 8 x 100 k on 1:40, flutter with a board would be a challenge It's a good idea to train so you can maintain a strong kick for your entire 200 LCM free, plus it's smart for you to work with your kick enough to understand gears and effort, you can adjust the intensity of your kick depending upon which event you're doing, ie the six beat kick you use in your 50 is different from the 6 beat kick you use in your 100, 200, and 400. watch Manaudou break the World Record in the 200 meter Free youtube.com/watch so did phelps in his 1:43 200 M free at worlds It's important for you to do fast 150 & 200 kicks plus swim fast 100's, 150's, 200's, 250's and 300's with a strong kick the entire way you should do some of the sprint kicking sets but keep in mind I created them to help slow kickers become faster kickers. Once they improve their speed, the next step is to work on 50's, 75's 100's and then to learn how to pace, split and control their effort to produce the best time. Hope this helps, Ande There is some good advice in this thread. I've been working seriously on my kick for the last two months now. At my club pretty much nobody can actually do the kick sets without using fins, but I'm determined to become the 2nd person in the pool who can do them. To me, using fins is the wimp's option, all good swimmers seem to have a good kick, so I figure if I want to be a good swimmer I need a good kick. To be able to do the club sets I need to be able to do, for example, 5 x 100m kick on 2:00. Last night I did some fairly easy 25m kick lengths, focusing on technique, and gradually speeded up to full speed. Then I did a couple of 4 x 25m kick on 60, my fastest 25m was 20.09 (from a push off). I'm perhaps cheating a little in that I do about 10 dolphin kicks before starting my flutter kick, but I figure this is good training in itself anyway. I was expecting to be too tired to do much more kick after that, but I started a set of 4 x 100m kick on 2:30 anyway, and somehow managed to hold 1:55 for each one, my previous best being 1:58 for each one. I think some of this was due to following the advice to feel the water on my shins and try to get propulsion from them. I think I still have a long road ahead to be able to do 5 x 100m kick on 2:00, but I do think it's worth it. I did a 200m free PB last weekend, going 2:09.79 compared to my previous PB of 2:10.97, and I think the stronger kick helped me to do that. I don't believe the people who say kick doesn't matter, all good 200m swimmers look like they have an outboard motor attached to their legs with a powerful kick for the whole distance.

Watched Manaudou. Could not at first viewing tell if she is still doing the 2 beat kick. What power she has in her arms.

How important is the kick??? I think not very important. Oh, how I wish you were coaching the club I used to swim with! I quit because I could not kick in a propulsive manner to save my life, and kick sets were such a huge part of the workout. I can flutter kick 25m with a board, if I'm willing to reach my max heart rate and spend the next five minutes recovering. I don't understand the obsession with kick sets -- except that I truly suspect Ande's right. But I don't want him to be right; I want George to be right. ;)

It really goes back to the 100 hp motor and the 9.9 hp motor, on a boat. The arms 100, the legs 9.9, would you have both in the water and run them at the same time. I have always been a believer in the legs are a balancer and the arms are the power. Don't get me wrong I don't mean using the arm muscles only, get your back into it. But what works for me does not have to be accepted by any one else.

But what works for me does not have to be accepted by any one else. That's true, of course. But I swim almost 20% faster when I use a 2 beat kick only for balance, so it definitely works better for me. Not sure what to do about the kick sets, though. I swear that not doing the assigned sets makes you look like a slacker, and when you're new to a club that's not a great way to get started.

Thanks for the further advice Ande. I tried a 25m kick without SDKs, I still did 3 SDKs just to smoothly transition from the glide to the surface, I'd struggle to do fewer than that. The best I managed was 21.37 compared to my 20.09 with 10 SDKs, so each SDK is making 0.2 seconds difference. This isn't too surprising as I can do 25m from a push off in 15.5 using SDK all the way. I hope you're right about being able to get down to 16/17 secs for my 25m flutter kick! I'd previously only been doing either 400m continuous kick or 4 x 100m. I think it has been good to add in some 25m repeats and 50m repeats. I think you're also right about doing some 150s and 200s. It's true what you said about getting used to the different "gears". My time for 100m kick started off not too far away from my 200m swim time, so I tried to pace the 100m kick like a 200m race, lifting the effort for the 3rd 25m and then giving it 100% down the final 25m. I found it useful in my 200 free race to keep the same feel for my kick for each 50 as I would for the corresponding 25 when doing 100 kick. By the way, my 2:09 200 free was SCM not LCM, most Masters swimming here in the UK is SCM. Most of us don't have the opportunity to train LCM, as there are very few LCM pools here, so the LCM nationals is much less popular than the SCM nationals, and there are a lot more SCM meets than LCM meets.

you're welcome work on your SDK, 15.5 is a pretty good SDK train to improve your SDK focus on improving your 10 m & 15 m SDK probably get your 25 SDK down to 11, 12 or 13 ande Thanks for the further advice Ande. I tried a 25m kick without SDKs, I still did 3 SDKs just to smoothly transition from the glide to the surface, I'd struggle to do fewer than that. The best I managed was 21.37 compared to my 20.09 with 10 SDKs, so each SDK is making 0.2 seconds difference. This isn't too surprising as I can do 25m from a push off in 15.5 using SDK all the way. I hope you're right about being able to get down to 16/17 secs for my 25m flutter kick! I'd previously only been doing either 400m continuous kick or 4 x 100m. I think it has been good to add in some 25m repeats and 50m repeats. I think you're also right about doing some 150s and 200s. It's true what you said about getting used to the different "gears". My time for 100m kick started off not too far away from my 200m swim time, so I tried to pace the 100m kick like a 200m race, lifting the effort for the 3rd 25m and then giving it 100% down the final 25m. I found it useful in my 200 free race to keep the same feel for my kick for each 50 as I would for the corresponding 25 when doing 100 kick. By the way, my 2:09 200 free was SCM not LCM, most Masters swimming here in the UK is SCM. Most of us don't have the opportunity to train LCM, as there are very few LCM pools here, so the LCM nationals is much less popular than the SCM nationals, and there are a lot more SCM meets than LCM meets.

I've had some friends staying with me for the past two weeks and haven't been able to train as much as usual. Only a marginal improvement on my flutter kick: off the wall - 23:11 for 25m but no improvement on my SDK time. Am mightily impressed by that 15.5 of notveryfast's and am beginning to wonder what I am doing wrong that is making me lag behind by 7 seconds. That is a huge margin over 25m! To be honest I am not really feeling the water when I SDK. My kick feels ineffectual and I am not entirely sure where the 'power' for my kick should be coming from: my legs or my hips or my whole body. Syd

This is an area I am weak in but am making strides. Since working out with the kids team instead of the masters team I have had more opportunity to do kick sets. In the last few weeks time I have gone from a :38 sec 25 yd kick to a :25 sec 25 yd kick which I did today! I am really hoping this will translate to a be a better time for my Nationals 50 free. I am also finding that we actually do sprints in practice, something that was foriegn to my other club. We primarily focused on distance or IM. Lots of long sets. Goal for next week to drop to :23 or better. Donna

no improvement on my SDK time. Am mightily impressed by that 15.5 of notveryfast's and am beginning to wonder what I am doing wrong that is making me lag behind by 7 seconds. That is a huge margin over 25m! To be honest I am not really feeling the water when I SDK. My kick feels ineffectual and I am not entirely sure where the 'power' for my kick should be coming from: my legs or my hips or my whole body. When I do it, I generate the power from my core body muscles, moving the hips powerfully up and down. The power then "ripples" down the legs to the feet. It also feels like a very high level of effort indeed, a high but not max effort takes me 17-18 secs for 25m SDK, to take the extra couple of seconds off I have to move my hips up and down with every ounce of force I can muster.