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

Originally posted by ande have you ever seen fish, dolphins, whales, and penguins move through the water, they go past horizontal ande While I agree with your comments Ande, Gull is going to have a field day with the highlighted remark.

Hi blue, first are you doing the kicking training I suggested, I haven't seen any updates. Please give us one, or train a week then test. Testing is critical. If you train sprint kicking often, you will improve but there will come a point where progress slows down, but you still can improve, even after you feel like you've hit a wall. Here's more thoughts and observations on Kicking fast fast kickers tend to have great toe points on the following website is an example of a great toe point www.twirlmania.com/TIPStoepoint.htm when you're walking, your feet tend to be at 90 degrees to your shin, when you kick you want your toe to point to be 180 degrees or beyond in relation to your shins ankle flexibility helps but isn't the end all there's also foot flexibility and knee flexibility (the ability to hyper extend your knees), feel for the water, (improve your distance per kick) fast kickers tend to be able to perfectly point their toes many can go beyond just being flat It also helps to have feel for the water with your shins and feet. most swimmer get propulsion from their down sweep great ones also get propulsion from their upsweep. Shaun Jordan was a great kicker, I heard he once flutter kicked a 50 yard free from a dive with a board in 23.3 When I watched Shaun kick from underwater it looked like the part of his leg from below his knee to the tip of his toe was a fin. I think basic foot flexibility is a genetic thing, I think you can improve your range of motion with stretching. There's one fellow I swim with who has terrible foot / ankle flexibility, he can't get his toes / feet to point, his son can't either. His foot only gets to about 150 degrees, he can't get a good angle on the water. I'd NEVER suggest a swimmer stretch to further hyper extend his knees. There's a long list of great swimmers who had hyperextended knees which gives them greater range of motion when they kick. a few were Tracy Caulkins, Jesse Vassallo, Mark Spitz, & Rick Carey, I'm sure there are many more. I think some are naturally that way and years of training and kicking stretches their knees further. I've heard Gary Hall jr and Michael Phelps are very fast kickers. I think they can kick 100 yards with a board well under 1:00. I've heard Phelps can kick 5 x 100 y with a board on 1:10 holding 1:00 On the texas Team, Neil Walker, Ian Crocker, Aaron Piersol, and Nate Dusing are all very fast kickers. They are also great at streamline dolphin kicking. Keep working on your kick. Ande

Looking at that picture, my ankle bends that far, but not my feet. I think I might try stretching them just to see if I can get a few extra degrees.