I have always been terrible at kick, and I believe it holds me back, so I want to make some improvements. As an age group swimmer, we would train lots of 50m kick on 60 secs, and I would struggle at that pace, and now I am older and heavier than I was then.
Physically I am 6'2" and about 225#, but my feet don't measure up at all at size 8, with a high arch and hammer toes. I don't want to make excuses, but this may be why my feet struggle to catch the water properly. I know this means I'm going to struggle, but I am looking to do the best with what I have.
What should I do in training to:
Improve feel for the water and effectiveness of kick?
Greatly improve kicking endurance?
Keep my kick "switched on" when doing full stroke?
Are there other factors I should consider?
One thing you can look at is whether or not you let your knee drift upwards while your foot is kicking forwards after the knee bends slightly. The way to do this is go to the corner of the pool and holding onto the two sides of the pool, kick vertically and look down to see if your knee stays forward as you finish your kick. Imagine kicking a ball and extending your foot forwards. If you were to let your knee move backwards as you extend your foot while you kick a ball, there would be very little power in the kick. I was at a clinic that showed video of several swimmers who had slower kicks because as their foot extended down their knee moved upwards. If this is not a problem, I agree with the previous post that you probably just need to do sets of fast kicking and working on ankle flexibility.
Do more kick sets. Sounds trite, but that's really it. End practice a couple times a week with something like 5x100s kick on an interval that's relatively challenging and try to work that interval down 5 seconds every few weeks or month. No fins!
Also, work on your ankle flexibility. IMO that has more effect on kicking ability than size of feet.
5x100 kick sets make me laugh. I cannot make 25yd kicking in any amount of time. I literally come to a dead stop in the water after a few yards. But I try anyway.
When they talk about ankle flexibility, they don't really mean the ankle. It's all about the extensor tendons from the shin down along the top of the foot. I was a runner 40+ years before getting into swimming seriously and running not only doesn't stretch those tendons, it compresses them. A good kick needs your foot to be almost in-line flat with the leg in order for it to act like a flipper, not at a 45 degree angle.
If the foot enters the water at a 45deg. angle the thrust from upward motion and downward motion actually cancel each other out. So do foot forward & down stretches to elongate those tendons. It will take a long time and often will cause muscle cramps in the shins and feet.
5x100 kick sets make me laugh. I cannot make 25yd kicking in any amount of time. I literally come to a dead stop in the water after a few yards. But I try anyway.
OK, maybe that was a little aggressive. I'm a relatively good kicker but I didn't scale down. My college coach used to make us do 1500 kick for time at the end of practice once a month or so, you kind of force yourself to get better a kicking for that or you're in your own personal hell for 20-30 minutes.
I think "short fins" will aid in ankle flex. When kicking ,it is not just down but, also the up phase that adds motion.
Try to keep your feet under the water surface so as to push water not air.
I can probably cope with a 5x100m kick at the end of a session, but it won't be very quick. Although, I'm a little concerned that this set will only assist with fc kick, as I assume you didn't mean to alternate strokes? The goal is to improve all types of kick.
Fc kick is probably my strongest, compared with fly, back, and brst, but it is also the kick that is most likely to just switch off when I go back to doing full stroke. I was wondering if there is a good drill to try to correct that, like counting kicks for each arm stroke? I'd like to be able to go to my feet when sprinting, rather than trying to move my arms quicker and just messing up my stroke.
I can probably cope with a 5x100m kick at the end of a session, but it won't be very quick. Although, I'm a little concerned that this set will only assist with fc kick, as I assume you didn't mean to alternate strokes? The goal is to improve all types of kick.
Fc kick is probably my strongest, compared with fly, back, and brst, but it is also the kick that is most likely to just switch off when I go back to doing full stroke. I was wondering if there is a good drill to try to correct that, like counting kicks for each arm stroke? I'd like to be able to go to my feet when sprinting, rather than trying to move my arms quicker and just messing up my stroke.
What do you mean by "Fc kick?" I don't recognize that acronym. Do you mean freestyle? Usually I do my kick sets as 25 dolphin/50 flutter kick (so my 100s are 25/50/25) whether with a board or on my back. Times should be relatively consistent either way though I am faster on my back.
One of the things with applying more kick to the full stroke is that mechanics do have to change a bit. A 6-beat kick is going to result in a different rhythm than a 2-beat kick no matter what - you're going to be sitting higher in the water, your body rotation is going to be different.
OK, so you have what I referred to as a 2-beat kick - 2 kicks per stroke cycle. When you're kicking like that, as you've realized and noted, it's not really a propulsive kick. That style is more for balance than anything else. What you want to learn to use kick as propulsion is not kicking harder, but kicking more - a 6-beat kick, or 6 kicks per stroke cycle/3 per arm stroke.
My favorite drill to kind of feel that rhythm difference is 6 kicks/3 arm strokes. Start off kicking on your side with one arm out streamlined. 6 flutter kicks this way. Then you take 3 strokes trying to maintain that same kicking rhythm with 3 kicks per arm stroke so you end up on the opposite side. Repeat as needed. Sorry, I don't think that came out very clearly via typing... I'm much more of a show-and-tell when it comes to describing.
That made sense. I will give it a try. Thank you.
OK, so you have what I referred to as a 2-beat kick - 2 kicks per stroke cycle. When you're kicking like that, as you've realized and noted, it's not really a propulsive kick. That style is more for balance than anything else. What you want to learn to use kick as propulsion is not kicking harder, but kicking more - a 6-beat kick, or 6 kicks per stroke cycle/3 per arm stroke.
My favorite drill to kind of feel that rhythm difference is 6 kicks/3 arm strokes. Start off kicking on your side with one arm out streamlined. 6 flutter kicks this way. Then you take 3 strokes trying to maintain that same kicking rhythm with 3 kicks per arm stroke so you end up on the opposite side. Repeat as needed. Sorry, I don't think that came out very clearly via typing... I'm much more of a show-and-tell when it comes to describing.
Sorry, I usually write fc because our coach would always write frontcrawl (freestyle) sets as fc for short.
As for using a higher beat kick, I'm not sure how beneficial it would be given how slow my kick is? Currently, on full stroke freestyle I rely mostly on my arms with just a small kick on each stroke. My stroke is fairly efficient, but it isn't quick. Adding lots of leg kick affects my arm technique and I get slower rather than quicker, but that may be because I am just not used to it and need to keep practicing so I can hold the arm technique whilst kicking. I've been swimming for many years, but never mastered using both my legs and arms at the same time properly. When I practice, my legs often switch off almost entirely, with only a balancing kick being used.
