Geochuck's: Kicking is a Total Waste of Time Thread

I think it's all about the rhythm. I am trying a new thing and I haven't got the rhythm of it yet. At least that's what I am hoping! Or else, I have no hope and I just 'dunno' :dunno:! Maybe I should take up dancing. I am a lousy dancer. Are you good kickers out there good dancers?! But for the time being it feels like patting my head with my one hand and rubbing my stomach with the other: awkward very awkward.

Loffe I have never done a forced point. The ankle is very loose and flexible and I let the feet do what ever they do. When I kick down they flex inward and naturally point. When I kick up I let them do what they want and they are not pointed.

As is sometimes the case Geo overstates things but is pretty accurate. A huge part of effectively using your kick is staying balanced ("integrate with stroke"). A sprint kick set for me is taking 4 strokes in a lap and kicking as hard as I can. Not just working on leg strength, but also head position and stroke balance. I warm up with a kick board because I like to see what is going on outsied the pool though!

Syd there are some pretty fast swimmers who use a 2 beat kick. All the kicking in the world will not help put the 6 beat kick into place. This can only happen when you swim full stroke (my thoughts only), others may and are allowed to disagree. Why are you trying to count your beats, just kick and swim. The thing is when I just kick and swim my legs start crossing over and I don't think I get any forward propulsion from them at all. I have to really concentrate to keep them side by side and it is exhausting to keep up a 6 beat tempo. It feels like my arms and legs are out of sync. Like my legs are going too fast for my arms. I only do slower sets like this. If I am sprinting I revert back to my old ways. I know this sounds so counterproductive but I just can't swim fast the new way.

When we were trying to get into the sprint mode we had so many swimmers and not enough pool. I always liked the racing dive entry, kick hard spint like the devil for 25 yards or meters with out a breath. Do it over and over again. Your breathing throws off your balance and your legs do all kinds of things. It will come witout thinking about it.

I believe flexibility in the ankle is very important. At least where I train I can see many people trying hard, but with their ankles not stretched. When I relax my ankles are completley stretched.. still with room for movment. If there is an angle of lets say 10-20 degrees and the ankles is very rigid, then it will probably not be so powerful. Just look how a fin move - stretched, but still flexible. Yes, I agree with you. I have been doing a lot of ankle stretching exercises. It has made me faster when I kick with a board but I still have the same kick integration problem when I do full stroke swimming.

It will come without thinking about it. Just a point of personal experience, I have found that if I have an ingrained bad habit that when I don't think about it I revert to the bad habit. I think that sometimes one has to figure out a way to avoid that. One common approach is to go super slow until you can do it automatically, then go just a bit faster and stay there until it is automatic again and so on. Starting out with blasting out short distances at high speed might not be the way to go. The whole process can take a long time if you have been practicing the old technique for a long time.

Lindsay what I am referring to is breathing is going to cause unbalanced leg action. You will never learn anything swimming slow, if you want to swim fast. The shortcut to balance is not to breathe and swim correctly. Just like in butterfly you will never attain your goals if you do that artificial distance butterfly.

Lindsay what I am referring to is breathing is going to cause unbalanced leg action. You will never learn anything swimming slow, if you want to swim fast. The shortcut to balance is not to breathe and swim correctly. Just like in butterfly you will never attain your goals if you do that artificial distance butterfly. I agree totally that butterfly is not a stroke that can be slowed down beyond a point, slowing down applies more to freestyle. I don't know that I'm ready to buy that there is nothing to learn from swimming slow, my argument is that generally if I can't achieve a technique or coordinated timing at a slow speed I probably won't be able to do it fast either. Naturally once I can do it at a slower speed I have to then work on doing it at faster and faster speeds if I want to swim fast. I think a lot of well respected swimmers advocate swimming slow as one component of working on technique. With butterfly I have found that using small fins allows me to swim in a slower more controlled manner than without fins and makes it easier to work on fitting the timing of all the components together, and the fins also allow me to do more repetitions before fatigue causes everything to fall apart. Actually my speed through the water is higher but my stroke rate is slower. My hope is that as my timing and coordination get more solid I will be able to progressively speed up and swim without the fins. I know that I am now getting that "it's working" feeling much more consistently with the fins on and I feel like my butterfly without fins is already improving, but when I swam in a meet back in April when I tried to go fast my arms sped up more than my body and legs and the general timing and therefore undulation fell apart and I reverted back to my old stroke. I hope that this was the result of it being my first swim after three weeks off sick, and just that I wasn't ready for full speed yet. Anyway, I won't know if this approach works or whether I'm just getting better at butterfly with fins for several more weeks at least. Too bad nationals are next week... :( On the plus side, butterfly with fins is fun! :agree:

Syd, I could have written what you wrote. I'm a 2 beat kicker and until I started reading this thread, couldn't imagine being anything but...and why? So yesterday I was shooting for a 100 here and there of using more kick (I can't count beats...whatever) during my 500s. It was exhausting, having to actually think about my swimming stroke. And during my 25 sprints, I reverted right back to 2 beats. Argh. I doubt I'll ever get it down, but I'll keep trying.