My freestyle kick is terrible because of my low plantar flexion, what can I do to make it more efficient?
When you say sit on your feet what exactly do you mean for freestyle and breaststroke kick?
Former Member
Doc Counsilman's directions to breaststrokers was, "Sit on your ankles while watching television".
Originally posted by strong440
Doc Counsilman's directions to breaststrokers was, "Sit on your ankles while watching television".
Pointing your toes out and sitting on your heels?
Yeah, that's exactly it.
A girl on my college team had some amazing ankles, but I guess that's why she's an olympian...
The best description I can think of: Instead of sitting with her calves under her thighs and feet pointed like most of us to work on ankle flexion, she would work on knee flexibility and ankle rotation. She would scoot her calves out a bit so they would be to the side of her thighs. She would then turn her ankles out AWAY from her body and she would lie all the way back to stretch. Her legs, ankles and back would be completely flat on the ground. It was painful enough to watch, let alone try. My knees, as flexible as they were, couldn't stand the pain of that stretch.
Yes, now picture that with the girl's back completely flat and her toes pointed toward you, not back.
Just got 10x more painful to imagine.
But overall, this is the same stretch that was mentioned earlier to help with ankle flexibility. It's a GREAT stretch.
