FindinFreestyle wrote:
Leg bands are fun, but they're a drag promoting substitute for the simple discipline of holding a mono-leg posture without them. Why not do it with the least amount of drag and the most acute muscle recruitment possible? Good body position fore and aft--lifting the lower and upper body from the core and properly positioning the head--is the foundation of any effective kick rhythm. Mono-leg pull does a great job of promoting both. I use "mono-legged pull" to mimic some of the proposed benefits of the band, while minimizing some of the negatives. In essence, the mono-leg pull just asks the swimmer to hold their legs together while pulling, as if they had only a single leg (hence, "mono-leg"). Whereas the band forces the legs together, the mono-leg pull asks the athletes to truly become aware of where and when the legs are kicking to counterbalance, and allows a small amount of wiggle, helping the athlete determine if the counter-balance is actually a HELP, rather than a hindrance. In this way a benefit is still gained by longer legged athletes, or those whose center of mass makes the optimal body position impossible without a kick. The athlete can also feel how a slim leg profile can help their legs "slip through the hole" opened by the upper body.
I can definitely do the monoband. Took me a bunch of practice, but I learned how to do it after getting the hang of a tight ankle band a few years ago.
While it's no issue for me, I actually don't think it's good advice to tell someone who has NEVER used an ankle band to try this. Invariably, they say 'sure, no problem!', and then they proceed to do minikicks that are far in excess of what an ankle band would allow, yet finish up saying 'felt good, how'd it look?' I don't know a single swimmer who could do this well without having drilled the heck out of a tight ankle band first, since those tiny kicks are offsetting small errors in their pull.
Those same folks who say they can do the monoleg pull but have never used a band - you strap 'em to the band tight, and they go <10 yards before their legs sink. I was in a tri masters group drop in a few times where the coach would start with monoleg pull, and then ask folks to bust out their bands. EVERYONE would make it through the monoleg pull and say not so bad, but as she passed out the extra ankle bands for the banded set right after, I think there were 3/20 people who could actually survive a single length, including me. Saw this happen at two different trimasters sessions!
Once you can do a tight ankle band though, this is no problem. When I don't have my ankle band and actually want to drill this hard, I actually make it even harder and crosslock my unbanded ankles together, which both creates drag and binds the legs together so it's even harder to dolphin kick and makes it pretty much impossible to even do minicheat kicks that you can still do with an ankle band.
Still, I lose a lot of speed when I do this, and I feel like I can't pull as hard and as fast as I can when I'm free. I lose about 15sec/100 with the band no matter what.