All that kicking - what's up?

Stacy Perhaps we are twins separated at birth. I am a puller as well. I swim mostly upper body. I am also a sprinter. When I have to do kick board drills I cringe as I am going to be left behind in the dust. I am just going to perservere and see what happens. I am a butterfly swimmer and have a good dolphin kick. I know that kicking is something I really really need to work on. SIGH Good luck. If you get any great tips pass them my way Katie

Slowswim. Glad to know that you feel my pain as well. OMG it drives me batty. I know my knees are weak as it hurts when I do kick sets. They will get stronger as the muscles around the knees get better. Though I must admit I am faster than I was. I am loosening up my ankles more. It seems to really help. OH GOOD LUCK WITH THE Fly. I am still not cardivasularly strong enough to be good at it. But I have good form. I kick butt when we do one arm fly. I am at about 25 metres now. I have broad shoulders and can just pull through it . I will work on that once I am stronger. It just feels natural to me. Okay Fortress you are right. I am a good dolphin kicker ( is that a word lol) because you use more than your legs. Maybe it helps that I have size 10 feet LOL LOL. Katie

I hear ya! Perhaps it's because you have weak legs (I know mine are weak), and the recovery time is longer for *** kick so you have ample time to recover and start another kick. In freestyle, the kicks are continous, so your legs don't get to take a break. It's just a guess. Or maybe you need to work on flutter kick techniques. If done right, flutter kicks can be pretty powerful. You could feel the propulsion as if your legs are pushing you forward. Flutter kicks look kind of like wipping motion.

Maybe it helps that I have size 10 feet LOL LOL. Katie Wow, we were separated at birth. I wear 9.5. Are you almost 6ft tall, too?

So I was browsing through the forum, LOTS of talk about kicking. Which brings me to discuss: What's up with my kicking? My kicking has been, is, and I believe will forever be SLOOOOOW. It's horrible. My breaststroke kick is MUCH faster than my free kicking. When I was a teenager on my club team, the coaches thought it would be funny to have me race some of the 10 year olds a 25yd free kicking. Needless to say, they won, and I didn't find it so funny. And not by a little bit, they were done and I was just getting to the flags. That's how slow I am. I'm convinced I'm a puller-swimmer, not a kicker-swimmer, if there is such a thing. I'm a sprinter, and I'm sure if you watch me swim a race there is little kicking going on (4 beat kick, rarely 6 beat). I don't have any video to share, sorry. My breaststroke kick is a decent speed...but it's breaststroke kick!!! What's wrong with my free kick? Seriously! In sets, I cannot make the times if I do free, but if I do *** I'm just fine. Is this normal? I've been "stuck" this way forever. I can hold 100's easily on the 1:50 with ***, and I can do that all day....I can do about 1 on the 2:00 with free and it just gets slower from there. :drown: Swimming? I can hold 100's on the 1:20 all day. I can also pull 100's on the 1:20 all day. Hmmmmm. Is there someone out there that can figure this out? :help: I'm only a decently fast kicker, although a sprinter as well. (Except for BR kick, that sux.) Think I use the upper body and core strength more than the leg strength when swimming. Although my legs seem pretty strong. I also have never liked kick sets all that much. And, not using a board, they drag on forever if you don't have fins. However, I do think fast kicking is critical for sprinting. So it is worth practicing and improving. I also am just forced to do more kicking than I would be inclined to do to save my shoulders. So I've tried to jazz up the kicking to make it more fun. I do loads of dolphin kicking with and without my monofin, on my front, back and sides. I do underwater shooters as well as some longer stuff. I've also been doing flutter kick shooters. For my anemic BR kick, I'm trying out the speedo BR fins, and they seem to help. In short, changing up the type of kicking, focusing on SDKs, and using some toys has helped improve my "kicking." I say "kicking" because the dolphin kicking is not just kicking, it hits the core and is part of the stroke. So maybe change things around a bit. A traditional kicking set would probably make me groan too. There's an old thread that discusses the issue of whether you should bother to focus on kicking. I think it's called "Challenge: Who's willing to give up their kicking sets?" or something like that. Personally, not me.

That's the thing...I know I am doing the kick right. I guess it's just weak legs, I don't know. It's strange.

Stacy Perhaps we are twins separated at birth. I am a puller as well. I swim mostly upper body. I am also a sprinter. When I have to do kick board drills I cringe as I am going to be left behind in the dust. I am just going to perservere and see what happens. I am a butterfly swimmer and have a good dolphin kick. I know that kicking is something I really really need to work on. SIGH Good luck. If you get any great tips pass them my way Katie Make that triplets! I think my problem is lack of foot flexibility. I don't fly (my coach promised to teach me next week when I see her!):applaud: and you can teel what my coach thinks of my sprinting in the signature.:cry:

That little motor at the back end is of no consequence (kicking). I like the high powered front wheel drive.

Another horrrrrrible kicker here! But I am getting better every week. Two weeks ago was the first time I broke 1 minute for an all out 50 kick and it took everything out of me. This week I not only broke a minute I went :53 and :54 in a set on a 1:30 interval, but that was only on the first 2 everything else was 1:05's. Since swimming with the kids team (since August) I have done tons more kicking than I have ever done over the past 3 years. I went ahead and took progress pictures today so that I could compare where I was in Aug. 06, with Aug. 07 and Oct. 07. Guess what I found, from Aug. 06 to Aug. 07 not much difference in the size and shape of my legs, thighs and butt. Between Aug. 07 and Oct. 07, :woot::banana::cheerleader: what a major difference. Doubles with the kids and all of those kick sets are really working wonders. If anyone is on facebook you can see my progress pictures at the following link: www.facebook.com/album.php

What would a good kick time for freestyle as a proportion of whole stroke time be?