Kicking

Your quads are the biggest muscles in your body and if they give out, you're toast. Kirk, What kind of workout are you doing that your quads are bigger than your glutes? The quads are a large muscle group when used for a six beat kick are contracting 3x as often as the lats/delts/tris etc. :) I wonder if you tripled your stroke rate with a pull buoy, and that was the norm, would people start to social pull? Just being nit picky.

Kicking is your engine in swimming - if you don't get enough in your regular masters workout - move down a lane or 2 once a week and do the main set kicking. Also - for you sprinters out there, VERTICAL kicking -- try it out. Build up to it with clean technique - it's a great way to increase your leg speed. For a long time alot of coaches (particularly TI) de-emphasized kicking as a major factor in swim speed. Kicking has actually become more and more important over the years - and TI is a "learn to swim" program - but has very little relevance on swimming fast - or swim coaching. As an aside, has anyone found any type of correlation between endurance built through kicking and endurance for cycling? I would bet anything that there is a negative correlation - but don't have the science. You build big leg muscles in cycling that you have no use for in kicking....

The problem with weights is that there has been no long term study on swimmers. That 6 week Costill study that Jim Thornton always cites is a joke. It's a very small sample over a very short time period. You can't measure the benefits of lifting in 6 weeks. True on both points. Interestingly, I've grown a bit weary of the heavy low rep lifting myself. (And, really, I am not very strong except possibly for my age). After my taper meet in December, I'm going to shift more into circuit training/plyo training/bodyweight exercises. I've added plyos lately, and really enjoy them. Most lifters and strength coaches feel that a strength program must be changed periodically (periodization) due to the body adjusting to the stimulus. This is a very complicated subject. But, as to kicking, I'm sold on its benefits. Perhaps my improvements are due more to kicking than weights. In order to know you would have to isolate one method do weights but stop kicking or vice versa.

I do think that strength gains translate into performance gains. The most direct relationship between lifting and swimming happens to benefit non-sprinters more than sprinters. Every flip turn includes the power component of a squat. If you are working hard and getting stronger with your squat (or any variant), and you are not getting further from the wall faster, you aren't applying your new strength in the pool. Although I know of no study on the subject, I would conjecture that after a certain point of reasonable squat strength it would be more beneficial to simply practice the flip turn technique. I am convinced that more practice will result in a much greater improvement than, say, adding 10 more kgs. to you're 5RM in the squat.

For myself, I believe there's a good correlation between squatting and the use of the legs for starts and turns. I feel that the correlation becomes stronger when you include more explosive types of squatting (vertical jumping and lifting with lighter weight and bands or chains on the barbell). Also don't feel it's necessary to squat down to parallel to get benefit from this type of lifting. You have better leverage when you don't squat so far down (squatting parallel is primarily of use if you are competing in powerlifting, or working on a good weighted stretch of the lower back, glutes and hams). Better leverage for me equates to more power/explosiveness, which I can apply to starts and turns. OK, this maybe my lifting background but I can't stand seeing these guys in the gym loading up a bb with big weight, barely descending and then calling that a squat. I feel that the benefit is negligible unless this is partial training (a powerlifting training technique). You will get more benefit by losing less weight and going parallel or lower.

Many women find strength training more important than men - I think we tend to carry less muscle in general and so find it helpful to get stronger. --mj Excellent point.

Erik, I've been vertical kicking for years. I started during rehab for a shoulder operation. I can keep my mouth above water with the brick, but it is barely over my head. I also like to use the streamline which is very tough. I do it all freestyle kick as fly aggravates my sciatica. Glad to hear you're swimming fast. Sorry I'll miss seeing you swim at Long Beach this year.

Most lifters and strength coaches feel that a strength program must be changed periodically (periodization) due to the body adjusting to the stimulus. This is a very complicated subject. In order to know you would have to isolate one method do weights but stop kicking or vice versa. I don't really periodize all that much. But as an ADD diva, :), I change things up all the time at the gym. I'm not willing to stop kicking, not a remote chance, so that experiment is a non-starter. I am willing to shift from heavy weights/low reps to a different kind of strength training though. My only hesitation in doing that is that it will cause havoc in comparing my times from 2009 (in B70) and 2010 (likely no B70 :bitching:). If I change the strength training regimen, then the comparison gets complicated and there are too many confounding variables. Oh well.

It seems to me that, as a general rule, masters swimmers don't like kick sets and if they do them it's easy "social" kicking. I think this is a poor strategy if you want to swim fast. As far as kicking with or without a board, I say do whichever one you feel comfortable with. If you hate kicking without a board, then kick with one. The important thing is to do kick sets, so whatever gets you to do them is fine. There have been numerous occasions in the past where I've trained with college swimmers and one thing I've noticed is that I'm as fast or faster than many of them (I'm talking women here) swimming, but they blow my doors off kicking. Now, I'm not a strong kicker, but even in comparison with everyone else in the pool this is consistent. The kids are better kickers than the masters swimmers. Now why is this important? I think for sprinters it's obvious you need to have a strong kick to be fast. But even for middle distance and distance it's important. For example, in a 200 free I always try to bring my kick in hard on the last 50. If my legs aren't in good shape this is a recipe for disaster. Your quads are the biggest muscles in your body and if they give out, you're toast. And for longer races kicking harder is the best way to increase your pace. We've all seen the swimmers who seem to have that extra gear and are able to put the hammer down and break away from the field. It seems to me in the vast majority of cases their extra gear involves increasing their kick. Again, you can't do this unless you've been working your kick in training. Maybe a select few have the discipline to train their kick while swimming, but I think most of us really need to do kick sets--and not social kicks!

Rich - looks like we are having the same ideas .... So far my pr is 22 seconds Why would a 50 sprinter need more than 22 sec of anything :) ? 10 pound brick ? Are you able to stay high enough to be able to breathe the entire time ? I started doing vertical kicking this summer. I alternated Free and Fly - started with 20 seconds on / off with just hands above my head (not keeping the arms straight) - then went longer - then I started to keep one arm straight - now I am at 30 seconds keeping a perfect streamline keeping my mouth above water all the way through. The weights will have to wait until next year. Not sure if it's the kicking or my race pace training - but I am swimming much faster compared to last year.