OK gang.
The "kicking" bullies have rounded on me even though I had a fantastic swim this weekend. They are telling me I need to kick, my coach said don't over do it b/c it disrupts the stroke...
I can kick, I maybe didn't intergrate it in my 100FR to their approval but I am not convinced that kicking alone is the way to go.
I think working 100's with kick focus is a better way rather than yards and yards at "meh" pace.
What % of your yards do you kick per week, and how much of that is with fins?
Former Member
And if he bends down in his Speedo to pick up his googles does he look like Joe the Plumber? :mooning:
It's no use, Rich. All I ever wear on deck is one of the long fancy suits (you know, the kind that disgusts all swimmers who yearn for the feel of the water) with a drag suit underneath. Not much to see in any position.
OK, right about hijacking the thread. Back on topic.
In the past I have done massive kick sets, as much as 2K breaststroke kick in a single workout. But I have found, even for breaststroke where the kick makes up the largest part of the total propulsion, that I benefit far more from working on the front half of the stroke. Making the arm pull strong and mostly directed backwards (i.e., NOT sculling) and the recovery rocket fast has had the greatest benefit to my stroke. My best ever 100 BR was about a year ago and was, at age 65, 2 1/2 seconds faster than my best college time in the stroke when I was age 18.
So, I don't work the kick at all, beyond warmup, anymore in practice. My personal experience is that I cannot mimic what I do with the arms in any cross-training effort but that I can engage the right combination of leg muscles with a variety of other exercises than swimming.
Well here is my day yesterday:
9:00 until 2:00 guarding. 2:00 to 2:30 get in the pool & teach a small class of boys to swim.
2:30 until 4:00 guard.
4:00-4:30 hover at the Y with nothing to do.
4:30 get in the water again and coach for an hour!
5:30 go home
Eat, drink tea.
7:40 head back to Y (20 mins)
8:30 swim (until 9:50.)
Where I got to do this:
500 8:45
5x100 1:45, 100 EZ
10x 50 :50 (meant to be :45 but only got 2), 100 EZ
20 x 25 odd :20 even :30 (made 4 then had to go :25/:30) 100EZ
3 x 100 FR K with fins no board (L/F/R/B by 25) 2:00
3 x 100 FR K 75 cruise 25 hard no fins prob went on 3:00 (talking at wall)
3 x 100 FR K with fins & board hard n fast on 2:00
1 x 100 FLY K with fins & board easy focus on pelvic undulation.
4 x 50 EZ swim... counted strokes got down to 11 and then 9 (push glide and 2 SDK's).
It was tough to go back to the pool!
Slacker. :thhbbb:
Chris says yes kick and yes with fins.
What did you guys (Paul, Chris) think of the posted workout above from a kick POV.
I personally hardly ever use fins. The book I quoted talked about fins, saying it is like doing strength training. But I do other kinds of strength training.
Fort loves fins, so do some others. I think they are fine to use as long as you don't learn to depend on them. I would suggest not using them all the time. Don't depend on them to make intervals.
Fins are generally hard on my knees and ankles, which are very loose; that's one reason I don't use them a lot.
Your kick set looks good to me, except that you use fins throughout.
Here are what I would consider to be two common mistakes:
-- too much of the kick set is social/recovery kick. The kick set is not a goal in and of itself, it is just a set stuck between two (harder) swim sets.
-- people only kick hard on 25s.
"High intensity" could just mean take a good bit of rest between repeats and try to hold the fastest possible average. Get your HR up, feel the burn in your legs. Care about your time and try to improve it. You don't want your legs to die after the first 25 of a race, so you need to kick hard for longer distances.
See this is my dilemma.
Paul's saying kick at high intesity (which for me means no more than 25 at a go and probably not much more than 300 a workout without fins).
Chris says yes kick and yes with fins.
What am I to do?
What did you guys (Paul, Chris) think of the posted workout above from a kick POV.
I must say though, I've been doing Ande's (3x100 )75 cruise 25 afap without fins 3-4 times aweek now. My cruise feels faster. If I keep that going maybe I'll be able to do more "engaged" cruise kicking.
I like to kick with a board, but I think a snorkel would be a good investment for people who don't like to use a board and don't want to kick on their back all the time.
...I never use fins, but I also never use paddles or buoys. I guess I need to get on board with the toys, but I've found going old school with just my suit and goggles (I don't like caps either) allows me to focus as much as possible on swimming in a body position and with the "equipment" that I will have when competing.
I'm not wild about fins either, they hurt my knees so I use them sparingly. But for exxagerating and demonstrating what kicking does, I think they work well as a starting point. As I discovered on a snorkeling trip when I noticed how my whole body rocked from side to side as I slowly kicked along a reef.
depends on the week, but we usually will have at least one really good kick workout every couple of weeks that will make us think twice about taking the stairs out of the building. This week was officially 20.6%, and we had a 1500y kick set last night.
In the last month, there have been several nights without much straight "kick" where we really worked our legs, doing things like:
24x100, 4 on 1:35, 4 on 1:30... down to 1:10 (you can imagine those last 4 were heavy on the kick)
10x50 1:30, all out, pick two strokes and do 5 of each (sprints = kick a lot)
100s and 200s swim going 3/4/5/6 lines underwater off every wall (our pool is lined both ways, so that is roughly 10,12,14,16y underwater)
vertical kick w/ medball, free kick only
Paul, if you ever swam anything longer than the occasional 200 free, you'd realize that kicking is highly overrated.
Besides, if Michelle ever learned to kick, I wouldn't be able to flip the counter fast enough to keep up with her.:notworthy:
Hey, I did the 400 LC this summer. :argue:
As for Michelle's legs? I think there's something biochemically that as soon as her head goes under water, her legs stop working :afraid:
