Unless you swim the butterfly, is there any use of doing streamlined dolphin kicks in open water? Has anyone dolphin kicked long distance in OW? :rolleyes: (if anyone dolphin kick crossed the English Channel, they wouldn't be called Channel swimmer but Channel kicker :D)
I don't know if anyone has ever "flown" ("flyed", "flew"?) the channel. I do remember that there is a swimmer who has done the 5K Big Shoulders Swim in Chicago doing fly the whole way. More than once.
I don't remember his name.
The question as you posted it would lead me to say no. However, for beach starts and finishes it can be quite helpful to master the art of dolphining.
YouTube- Gerry Rodrigues on Dolphining for Open Water Swimming
In my experience, yes. I experimented with this on lots of OW training swims recently and found alternating to dolphin kick to work quite well on longer swims, /especially/ when wearing a buoyant wetsuit. (Orca 3.8) Fly kick is much more powerful than free kick and you can synch it with your free stroke quite well, the body movement fits better with swimming in swells, you get more propulsion out of your legs in a wetsuit with fly than free kicking. Note; I was training to purely be able to swim a very long distance OW at a sustained pace, not race.
I read a blog in which an open water swimmer or triathlete spoke of 'porpoising' at shallow water, or beach, race starts and finishes to gain on fellow competitors...
my thought is his strategy would include a butterfly, or dolphin, kick.
I read a blog in which an open water swimmer or triathlete spoke of 'porpoising' at shallow water, or beach, race starts and finishes to gain on fellow competitors...
my thought is his strategy would include a butterfly, or dolphin, kick.
Perhaps, but not much (if any). "Porpoising" involves pushing off the bottom, then gliding a bit and pushing off again. You arc out over the water like a dolphin, but you don't kick like one.
