Has anyone tried to stretch their ankles to improve their kick?

In my junior year at Texas, Eddie Reese put me on The Rack, a device Finis designed to help with ankle flexibility. I used to sit on the deck every day for about 10-15 minutes with my ankles in that thing. The name "The Rack" is a perfect term. It felt like torture. And it did not help my ankle flexibility. I'll rewind a bit. My ankles used to bend, and still bend, to about 40 degrees, if you say that zero degrees is an ankle flexibility where the toes point straight up, and 90 degrees is where the foot is parallel to the floor. That's pretty bad. The average elite swimmer, which is what you could define me as back then, could flex their ankles to at least 60 degrees. My feet even had a nickname: the Aquabrakes. When I dove in, people would make screeching sounds to imitate my immediate slowdown when my feet hit the water. Yeah, it was a laugh riot. Anyway, I tried everything else when The Rack didn't work: stretching my ankles while watching TV, getting physical therapy to loosen the tendons. Nothing worked, and nothing ever will. Eddie threatened to break my ankles. I think he was joking. I'm "blessed" with bad ankles. But it's kind of good for breaststroke! Paul Smith loves to mock my backstroke, in which he inaccurately says he can see my toes pointing straight out of the water on my kick. Again, my toe point is 40 degrees, not zero. I don't know if I could have had good ankle flexibility if I had worked on it at a much younger age. I know I never stretched regularly as a teenager, and I think various parts of my body have paid the price for that as I have aged. But my ankles even more. I am sure my other strokes would benefit from flexible ankles, but I seem to be doing well with my Aquabrakes. I do the best with what I have. I'm a bad kicker. Always will be. I don't dolphin kick off every wall on backstroke. I go last on kick sets. I get beat by girls on kick sets. And I have size 13 feet. But I wouldn't have achieved what I have in swimming if I let myself be defined by my bad ankles. Don't let yourself do the same.

Ankle flexibilty is important for kicking. I know because I sprained my ankle about 3 weeks ago and its stiff, and man is it hard to swim. My whole stroke is out of whack because my kick isnt there. Kicking with fins, scuba fins, not zoomers, is a good way to increase ankle flexibility. But im not sure that ankle flexibility means everything for kicking. Leg strength is also a factor. Bouyancy is another factor that is often overlooked. Some people just have better bouancy than others. I read somewhere that girls usually have better bouancy than guys because of their weight distribution that causes their hips to sit higher in the water, resulting in a better kick.

I do some casual ankle stretches while working on a computer or while relaxing on the couch. I don't know that any benefit has come of these stretches because I did not employ any sort of tracking/measurement system before I started. I am sure that gains in kicking efficiency are attainable through this process, depending upon you current level of flexibility, but my efforts are probably not sufficient to make much of a difference.

I would say stretching your ankle will help flexibilty--I'm unsure though how it may relate to kick speed. I will however add these 2 cents: swimmers have flexible ankles and we are susceptible to spraining them. Stay away from court games that rely on pivoting--tennis, basketball, volleyball. squash and so on. I also tell my swimmers to basically avoid the company softball game and any winter outdoor sport--I know too many that rip, tear, or sprain something. Conversely I never put my triathletes I coach in fins and they never do long kick sets--ankle strength is important for those long runs.

Best stretch was given to me by the coach from Broadview "Y" in Toronto, he said to pick up pop bottle tops with your toes and put them in a bucket.

Then what do you do with all those opened sodas ? Can you do it with beer bottle tops instead ? :cool: I found the longer fins ~helped~ with ankle flexibility Still have a horrible kick though. Coach says that just ability to point the toes down doesn't make it, they have to have some floppiness too.

I was watching some swimming videos and it seemed to me that the flexibility of the foot was more important than that of the ankle. On some of those people it looked like the foot was bending quite a bit while the ankle didn't seem to be flexed all that much past 60 degrees. The feet on these people really looked like a flipper the way it bent and whipped with each kick.

Lindsay Wrong, i disagree with the don't-kick-past-horizontal theory, I've seen many fast swimmers kick and they tend to kick about 5 to 10 degrees past horizontal hyperextention of the knees allows the lower leg to go further down without moving the thigh more the kick is like a whip the core moves, thigh moves down. the lower leg moves have you ever seen fish, dolphins, whales, and penguins move through the water, they go past horizontal when they kick their bodies are more "aquadynamic" and their fins have greater surface area which generates more propulsion ande Originally posted by LindsayNB A naive analysis based on simple geometry and simple physics would say that any surface with a normal whose horizontal component is in the forward direction will be contributing to drag not forward propulsion. This implies the kick ceases to be propulsive (although it can still provide vertical forces) when it passes the horizontal. So kicking down beyond horizontal is only useful to the extent that is positions you for the upward kick, and kicking upward beyond horizontal is only useful to the extent that it positions you for the downward kick. So a hyperextension is only useful if you have a powerful upward kick, right? Fins and flexible feet and ankles provide an advantage becaue the provide a surface that continues to face backward even after the leg has passed the horizontal, right?

A naive analysis based on simple geometry and simple physics would say that any surface with a normal whose horizontal component is in the forward direction will be contributing to drag not forward propulsion. This implies the kick ceases to be propulsive (although it can still provide vertical forces) when it passes the horizontal. So kicking down beyond horizontal is only useful to the extent that is positions you for the upward kick, and kicking upward beyond horizontal is only useful to the extent that it positions you for the downward kick. So a hyperextension is only useful if you have a powerful upward kick, right? Fins and flexible feet and ankles provide an advantage becaue the provide a surface that continues to face backward even after the leg has passed the horizontal, right?

We can make it too complicated. To get it right kick on your back while sculling and watch the feet, make sure when kicking up the toes flex in. When you kick down they line up at 90 degrees. Then I like the waterpolo drill of the hands behind the back, kicking on the front with the head out of the water, things do happen naturally. After all said and done how important is the kick except for balance you don't even need a kick.