As I got older and kept swimming, I eventually had the good fortune to train with great coaches, teammates, and pools. These resources reached a peak for me in college. We learned to train and develop our SDK, which was still fairly new at the time. One of the big differences for me as a masters swimmer now is the actual pool itself. The facilities I train in now tend to be older and non-competition based. There’s a shallow end and deep end, often with the pool depth being so shallow that it greatly inhibits SDK training. You have to be able to obtain a specific depth to engage maximum benefit from your SDK. This is one of the reasons why I think many masters swimmers are weak in this area, aside from not developing the skill as a youngster because it simply did not exist. Have any of you encountered the same problem? Also, it’s difficult for younger swimmers who train in the same kind of environment to develop their SDK. I wonder if other countries have more competition-based pools in which their swimmers can learn the necessary skills to compete globally.
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Former Member
What makes you think SDK is new. It does have a new name for sure but in the late 50s I used to race free stylers by dolphin kicking 50 yards in training. Our pool was 9 feet in the deep end and 3 feet in the shallow end. Sure it is easier in a deeper shallow end but inconveniece makes for innovation.
Our club had lots of 23.5, 24 second crawlers and I would race them doing dolphin kicking in workouts when we did 50s.
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Former Member
What makes you think SDK is new. It does have a new name for sure but in the late 50s I used to race free stylers by dolphin kicking 50 yards in training. Our pool was 9 feet in the deep end and 3 feet in the shallow end. Sure it is easier in a deeper shallow end but inconveniece makes for innovation.
Our club had lots of 23.5, 24 second crawlers and I would race them doing dolphin kicking in workouts when we did 50s.
