A kick start to kicking A***

A Guest Post by Andrew Mackay of Boost Coaching

When I look at many adult swimmers, their kick technique is the key area that they can develop to improve their swimming.

Many open water swimmers will argue that they don’t need to kick, but what they don’t realise is that their poor kick, or lack of kick, is like an anchor dragging their lower body behind them.

If you can master some of the basics of kicking you reduce drag and increase lift in your body position by developing the right technique.

You’ll also be able to leverage your kick for improvements in other components of your swimming and gain propulsion.

I often see swimmers creating the right depth of their kick but unfortunately will also pull their toes down at the end of the kick movement (pointing down) creating additional drag.

Swimmers that struggle to move forward with their kick only training sets (no fins) will always be frustrated at how slow they with a huge amount of effort.

Swimmers will see better results wearing fins as these force the foot into a better position and it’s much harder to pull the toes down at the end of the kick action.

For most adults developing open water training they need to feel like their kick is shallow with big toes pointing behind and constantly sweeping by one another.  

I guarantee there are components of your kick and posture that I mention in the video above, that you can improve on.