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
Former Member
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.
Great questions! You want to be as objective as possible, so know the variables specific to timing each effort and keep it consistent. I have my swimmers kick without a board, lock their elbows and lock their thumbs. Good luck!
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.
Great questions! You want to be as objective as possible, so know the variables specific to timing each effort and keep it consistent. I have my swimmers kick without a board, lock their elbows and lock their thumbs. Good luck!
