In my quest to figure out how to improve my freestyle speed away from embarrassingly slow times, I am working on the following three categories:
1) General form (especially arms) - I made a post about this awhile back with video and have improved a good deal since then, shaved a few seconds off my 50.
2) Stroke frequency - eventually going to one of those pace beepers and experiment with different frequencies.
3) Kick - kick frequency, kick width, and foot flexibility
This post is concerned with the last of these - the kick. I recently compared my fastest kick-only time (no snorkel or flippers) with my fastest freestyle time and it is almost exactly 2x slower. I read various places that the kick provides a much smaller portion of the total propulsion in freestyle, so this gap seems smaller than I would expect.
One explanation is that I am probably not giving the same attention/efffort to my kick during freestyle, which makes sense.
Nevertheless, I still think I have much more work to do on my kick - its about ~86 seconds for 50m.
Please let me know your kick times and ratio to equivalent free style times so I can set some reasonable goals and figure out how much my kick is holding me back.
Thanks!
here's links to my speed improvement programs
My times were SCY
20.4 50 fr
28.0 50 k from a push in a brief
Ian Crocker 50 scy
19.0
24.5
shaun jordan 50 scy
19.1
23.3 board with a dive, brief
Garrett Weber Gale 50 LCM
kicked in 27.2 &
swam 21.4 in 50 LCM in a LZR, 22 low in jammer
Best times last year from a push in practice:
100 free - 100 flutter kick w/ board ratio for me is 0.67
200 free - 200 flutter kick w/board ratio for me is 0.68
Ande's fellas range from 0.77 to 0.81- sounds like I need a better kick.
I am curious if there are many like me who have:
A) a relatively slow kicking speed
B) a relatively slow pulling speed (i.e., with pull buoy)
C) despite the above two shortcomings, a relatively decent swimming speed
It makes me think that it's not just adding the pull and the kick together to get swimming speed, but some weird synergy where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
But what, I wonder, accounts for this? What is the Mystery Factor? Body roll? Some unintended anchoring effect whereby the legs allow the arms to gain greater purchase on the water?
I recently compared my fastest kick-only time (no snorkel or flippers) with my fastest freestyle time and it is almost exactly 2x slower.
Please let me know your kick times and ratio to equivalent free style times so I can set some reasonable goals and figure out how much my kick is holding me back.
Ratio wise, I'm probably around a .75. If you're talking a 50, 100, or 200 you need a solid 6 beat kick and .5 (2x slower) is definitely something to improve upon.
However, I never developed the right rhythm to do a 6 beat kick throughout 400+ races. Distance events are much easier to go fast with just a 2 beat kick, if you are a strong puller. In which case the ratio is thrown right out the window.
Good luck!
I am primarily concerned with comparing the following:
1) 25M pool "fastest speed normal freestyle" (whatever that means to you)
2) 25M pool flutter kick, arms in front with no board. For the breathing you can do whatever you want, just don't use a snorkel.
Good kickers will probably only be a second or so slower kicking than swimming given this scenario.
So many questions.
With a board
Without a board
In a 25M pool
In a 50M pool
Dolphin kick for 15M in a 25M pool each length
Dolphin kick for 15M in a 50M pool
No dolphin kick
Two arms extended in front in streamline
One arm in front streamline the other arm sculls at the thigh when taking a breath
These are just a few qestions there are many more.
I am one of the top 2-3 fastest guys on my masters team in the 50 free, but one of the absolute SLOWEST kickers. I mean, I go 22 low in the 50 free but I get lapped by by people twice my age when we kick.
Swimming is a combination of every thing you do. I prefer to call it technique. A great kick is not going to do it by its self. I quit doing kick sets when I was 17. I did most of my work outs at full stroke. I did heavy kicking sets in combination with swimming. What I mean is I kicked harder while swimming. I also did a lot of swimming with a reduced strength of kick. I did what they call arms only but did it with a very light flutter kick.
When working on Butterfly I raced the club freestyle sprinters by doing 50's of dolphin kicking in a 25 yard pool. I used to do 50 yards of dolphin kicking with a dive in around 24 seconds. Just took a breath at the turn. I know 50 yards dolphin in 24 seconds may not be considered fast now.
To get a faster freestyle every thing has to work together (synergy). Synergy - The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual.
To show what is possible...
"...Recently, one such kicking savant from Michigan suggested I write about these kick sets. Former All-American and National Teamer, Chris DeJong, relished these sets and he spoke about the kickboard battles waged among his Wolverine teammates.
"It got intense," he remembers. "Me, Vanderkaay, Vendt when he was with us in '08, we really got into it. The standard was breaking five minutes in a 400 kick - long course. We could do it, and we heard Ian Thorpe was one of the only other guys ever to break that barrier.""
www.swimnetwork.com/.../Grab-Your-Kickboard.aspx
Peter Vanderkaay has gone around 3:45 for 400 LCM. Kicking 400 LCM in 5:00 gives him a swim/kick ratio of 0.75.
