I bought a Finis snorkel a few years back but I just do not enjoy swimming with it. I find I hold my breath more per 25 than I do in an underwater or hypoxic 25. I haven't even tried doing a flip turn with it yet.
Anyone else go through a similar adjustment phase when they started working with their snorkel? How did you get used to it?
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I am very happy to see others use these gimmicky gadgets. There is a thing called wasted time. Do I really have to come back and race again to show you that there is an easier way. The easier way is full stroke swimming.
Rather than just your bald assertions, do you have any reasons these things are bad?
When I was in HS and college -- and a much faster kicker than now -- I used a kickboard exclusively. That's just the way almost everyone trained their kick at the time.
Nowadays I split about evenly with and without a board. Kicking without a board is better to include hypoxic training (probably a bad idea in your book too, right?) and to better simulate actual race conditions. I use a kickboard if I am doing aerobic/endurance kicking for general leg conditioning, or if I just don't want to have to worry about hypoxic training.
I see lots of people who say a kickboard is bad because body position is bad. I think that's bunk. Sure, the body position isn't exactly the same but from the abs down it is probably pretty similar. And in any event, for training the legs, it doesn't matter.
The most useless kicking exercise (IMO) is doing dolphin kick on your back while on the surface of the water. That's completely different than doing it underwater, and it also doesn't match anything you do while racing.
If you are hung up on body position while using a board, then I would recommend getting a FINIS alignment kickboard and using a FINIS snorkel with it. (And no, I am not a paid FINIS rep.)
I am very happy to see others use these gimmicky gadgets. There is a thing called wasted time. Do I really have to come back and race again to show you that there is an easier way. The easier way is full stroke swimming.
Rather than just your bald assertions, do you have any reasons these things are bad?
When I was in HS and college -- and a much faster kicker than now -- I used a kickboard exclusively. That's just the way almost everyone trained their kick at the time.
Nowadays I split about evenly with and without a board. Kicking without a board is better to include hypoxic training (probably a bad idea in your book too, right?) and to better simulate actual race conditions. I use a kickboard if I am doing aerobic/endurance kicking for general leg conditioning, or if I just don't want to have to worry about hypoxic training.
I see lots of people who say a kickboard is bad because body position is bad. I think that's bunk. Sure, the body position isn't exactly the same but from the abs down it is probably pretty similar. And in any event, for training the legs, it doesn't matter.
The most useless kicking exercise (IMO) is doing dolphin kick on your back while on the surface of the water. That's completely different than doing it underwater, and it also doesn't match anything you do while racing.
If you are hung up on body position while using a board, then I would recommend getting a FINIS alignment kickboard and using a FINIS snorkel with it. (And no, I am not a paid FINIS rep.)
