What would you consider as the most important reason to include kicking in your workouts?
Also, what do you see as the main difference and purpose between the exercises kicking with a board and kicking without a board?
In the board vs no-board debate...assuming there are no shoulder issues that might mean one cannot or should not use a board...
I probably do roughly half my kicking without a board. When I do that, I also work on hypoxic training (staying under as long as I can) and streamlining. Holding a tight streamline, especially on one's stomach while doing dolphin kick, takes some effort (and even coordination) and you have to condition those (non-leg) muscles a little.
I will kick with a board when I don't want to have to worry about the breathing aspect. Sometimes this is because the distances are longer, or because I'm tired from a previous set, or I just don't feel up to a hypoxic set.
(By the way, I really dislike doing dolphin kick on my back while on the surface. For some reason this is a popular type of kick with age-groupers around here. It is slower because so much energy is lost to make surface waves, and doesn't correspond to anything that is ever done in a race.)
Not so much in this thread, but a lot of people comment that they think boards should never be used b/c it alters body position too much. I've never bought that argument. When I was younger, I was a significantly faster kicker than now and I ALWAYS used a board back then. It was good enough to develop me as a pretty good kicker back then...how is it so evil now?
But while I think that kicking with a board is perfectly fine for conditioning the legs for kicking, ultimately you have to do the races without the board. So you need to do a significant amount of training without it too. And learn to integrate it into the stroke.
In the board vs no-board debate...assuming there are no shoulder issues that might mean one cannot or should not use a board...
I probably do roughly half my kicking without a board. When I do that, I also work on hypoxic training (staying under as long as I can) and streamlining. Holding a tight streamline, especially on one's stomach while doing dolphin kick, takes some effort (and even coordination) and you have to condition those (non-leg) muscles a little.
I will kick with a board when I don't want to have to worry about the breathing aspect. Sometimes this is because the distances are longer, or because I'm tired from a previous set, or I just don't feel up to a hypoxic set.
(By the way, I really dislike doing dolphin kick on my back while on the surface. For some reason this is a popular type of kick with age-groupers around here. It is slower because so much energy is lost to make surface waves, and doesn't correspond to anything that is ever done in a race.)
Not so much in this thread, but a lot of people comment that they think boards should never be used b/c it alters body position too much. I've never bought that argument. When I was younger, I was a significantly faster kicker than now and I ALWAYS used a board back then. It was good enough to develop me as a pretty good kicker back then...how is it so evil now?
But while I think that kicking with a board is perfectly fine for conditioning the legs for kicking, ultimately you have to do the races without the board. So you need to do a significant amount of training without it too. And learn to integrate it into the stroke.
