I once had a terrific boss who taught me a lot not only about work, but life. One thing he taught me and that I've lived by ever since is to constantly ask yourself "Does what I'm doing make sense?"
Applying that question to kicking drills has made me wonder. I have read more than once that (other than in breaststroke) kicking a) is used to maintain your body's position in the water, b) that you derive little or no propulsion from it (other than perhaps when sprinting), c) kicking hard can actually increase your drag and slow you down, and d) kicking hard more than doubles your energy use.
Given those four things, I'd like to know your thoughts (and not just knee-jerk reactions) from both swimmers and coaches, regardless of your experience level:
Does it make sense for us to use a large part of our practice time and energy doing kicking drills?
Do we derive any real benefit from doing so?
Do we do it because it actually helps us be better swimmers (which would make sense), or do we do it because "that's the way it's always been done" (which makes no sense at all).
Keep on strokin'!
Parents
Former Member
My coach has made a couple of comments about kicking. After reading one of the TI articles which pretty much dismissed the value of doing kick set with kick boards I asked him his thoughts on the issue (disclaimer: I hate kicking) and he said that if nothing else kick sets are a good way to get your heart rate up and good cardiovalscular conditioning, which is certainly true for most people, especially men. A lot of our kicking occurs during warmup. Mixed into a workout, a kick set allows you to continue to work hard while giving your upper body some recovery time.
The other comment I found interesting was in relation to kicking in butterfly where he commented that if you kick hard early in a race you will feel it later on, but not in your legs, you will feel it in your shoulders and upper body which will have to do their work with less oxygen because of the large amount of oxygen consumed by the large leg muscles. He recommended saving an energetic kick for the last part of the race. During the Olympics I noticed that even in the 200 free the swimmers saved really hard kicking for the final sprint.
The key obviously is to find the level of kicking where the extra propulsion gained is not overbalanced by lower propulsion from your oxygen-starved upper body.
Personally, I found that through experimentation I was able to adjust my kick to improve the propulsion to effort ratio. I.e. kicking hard may be good practice for your end of race sprint (or sprint races) but it is also useful to practice kicking at the sort of level you will use for most of your longer distance races, which I found to be different.
Reply
Former Member
My coach has made a couple of comments about kicking. After reading one of the TI articles which pretty much dismissed the value of doing kick set with kick boards I asked him his thoughts on the issue (disclaimer: I hate kicking) and he said that if nothing else kick sets are a good way to get your heart rate up and good cardiovalscular conditioning, which is certainly true for most people, especially men. A lot of our kicking occurs during warmup. Mixed into a workout, a kick set allows you to continue to work hard while giving your upper body some recovery time.
The other comment I found interesting was in relation to kicking in butterfly where he commented that if you kick hard early in a race you will feel it later on, but not in your legs, you will feel it in your shoulders and upper body which will have to do their work with less oxygen because of the large amount of oxygen consumed by the large leg muscles. He recommended saving an energetic kick for the last part of the race. During the Olympics I noticed that even in the 200 free the swimmers saved really hard kicking for the final sprint.
The key obviously is to find the level of kicking where the extra propulsion gained is not overbalanced by lower propulsion from your oxygen-starved upper body.
Personally, I found that through experimentation I was able to adjust my kick to improve the propulsion to effort ratio. I.e. kicking hard may be good practice for your end of race sprint (or sprint races) but it is also useful to practice kicking at the sort of level you will use for most of your longer distance races, which I found to be different.
