Kicking is simply one of the most under-rated but fundamentally important aspects of swimming. It constantly startles me how many triathletes and open water swimmers have the mindset that kicking is not important for ocean or triathlon swimming. It’s good to remember that the world’s best open water swimmers all do more than 90% of their training in a pool environment, and 100% of those swimmers have a spectacular kick.
The way in which peoples legs and feet interact with the water is often one of the largest causes of drag for a non competitive swimmer. This means some of your largest potential gains can come from focusing on this sometimes frustrating and normally misunderstand part of your swimming.
You only have two power systems in the water so when you completely ignore one of them you not only miss out propulsion gains, but even ignoring from that, a poor kick and the drag it will add can ruin you efficiency completely.
A beautifully simple description of a good kick is… Long legs, floppy ankles and a compact kick
1) Floppy ankles – this involves flexibility which some of you have and some of you don’t. If you do have bendy ankles, then make certain to let them relax! If you don’t, they either learn to minimise the problems from this issue or start stretching.
2) Long legs – the power in a good kick comes from your hips not by bending your knees as in cycling. A leg that bends at the knee will create two problems: firstly it reduces power, and secondly it causes drag from water hitting that bend in the leg.
3) Compact action – any kick that moves up and down or side to side away from the longitudinal centre-line of your body will create a disturbance in water flow that slows you down. Even if such a kick can add more power, normally more than that incremental amount is cancelled out by the extra drag created by it. Remember that you want the most efficient kick and that certainly not always the most aggressive.
DRILL: Stretching – 8 x 1min, R1min – sit down on your bum and jam your toes under something heavy (eg sofa) with something soft above your toes. Gently push down on your knees until they almost straighten and so you load up your ankle joint
SET: 3x (2 x 50m Sprint Kick FINS, R30 + 2 x 25m Sprint Kick NONE, R30)
Note – use short stiff cut-down fins which will stretch your ankles while kicking
Training tips provided by Future Dreams Swimming
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