freestyle vs kick-only times

Former Member
Former Member
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!
Parents
  • 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!
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  • 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!
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