why head above the water when kicking with kick board?

You don't have to keep your head above water when using a kick board. You can put your head in the water and lift or turn it only to breathe. You can use a different kind of board that provides you with a more ergonomic hand and head position while kicking. You can use no board at all. Methinks some coaching would help. Do you have access to a coach? :)

You don't have to keep your head above water when using a kick board. You can put your head in the water and lift or turn it only to breathe. You can use a different kind of board that provides you with a more ergonomic hand and head position while kicking. You can use no board at all. Methinks some coaching would help. Do you have access to a coach? :) Thanks:) In fact i had a coach for a quarter, and after that I began alone, now I am considering posting videos for critique. I would greatly appreciate it if you can have alook at my videos. www.youtube.com/watch

So you can chat with your buddies ;)

Mine is up and down. Never always up. With my size the small size of my board I pretty much can't keep my head up the whole time.

I 'm not comfortable with kickboards. If I use one, I rest my fingers on it and roll when I want to breathe. I find the head up position hurts my back. I'd rather do roll in roll out drills.

I could do it as a kid, now I can't. Face partly submerged most of the time, and lift up or turn to breathe. I think the old school kick boards were much bigger. But that was a long time ago and my memory of these things is getting vague.

Funny story. A coach told me that when in college, her coach at the time got irritated that the swimmers were doing more socializing than kicking, so he asked them to hand him their boards, and he proceeded to break them in half and give half a board to each swimmer. With half a board, more work and less talking was required.

For half of my workout I use a small triangular board and if I kept my head above water all the time I would be back where I started 2 years ago(severe lower back pain). I have found that my head naturally want's to turn to the side with my chin tucked over my shoulder and I switch up sides every other lap(so I can keep an eye on the other swimmers). A nice side effect is that I get a good stretch in between my sets.

Funny story. A coach told me that when in college, her coach at the time got irritated that the swimmers were doing more socializing than kicking, so he asked them to hand him their boards, and he proceeded to break them in half and give half a board to each swimmer. With half a board, more work and less talking was required. My coach did that...the talking was silenced for about a minute while we watched in amazement and thought what the heck is this crazy lady doing now! After that, back to business as usual...

Get rid of the kick board entirely for one month. Do kick sets using 6 x 6 and power kicks and see how much faster you get. Use the kick board after those 4 weeks for "social" kicks but stick to no board for most sets...and kick HARD!