No, it doesn't make 20 secs per 100 difference. A little bit, but not that much.

There are a few guys who can't kick at masters, and have similar toe pointing abilities to yours. One of them (he's 30, and really a sprinter more than anything else) is about 5:00 for his 400m free. Oh, he's an adult onset swimmer, been swimming for about 5 years, no previous background.

On kick sets I lap him every 150 or so.

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Good input, but I need to clarify I'm talking long distance swim pace - even I can muscle thru a 400m fairly quick with zero ankle flexion but after that exhaustion will take its toll - I'm talking triathlon swim pace > than half a mile sustainable swim pace. There's always exceptions out there, but I suspect a lot of 2:00+/100m pace triathlon swimmers have really poor ankle flexion like me?

Now show me your feet and long distance stats!

Yes, but there are lots of moderately fast to really fast guys with poor ankle flexion too. I know some of them. It isn't the tiny bit of drag from your ankles slowing you down.

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[quote JasoninHalifax
Yes, but there are lots of moderately fast to really fast guys with poor ankle flexion too. I know some of them. It isn't the tiny bit of drag from your ankles slowing you down.[/quote]


Put on your scientific swim cap and look at the amount of vertical plane my feet present to the water- combined feet is about 7" wide by 4" tall or about the dimensions of a brick. A brick of drag isn't tiny in my book.

Now show me your feet and stats :)

GTO - I don't have a working camera right now but my ankle extension is very, very similar to yours, and i'm NOWHERE close to your wife's extension. I mostly do oly dist races and typically swim 20-22 min depending on the actual length of the course, i.e., some alleged "1500 m" have been as fast as 14:00 (short and/or with the current) and some as slow as 30:00 (long and/or against current). In the pool, my best 500/1000/1650 yd are 5:57, 12:20, and 20:40, but my best 25 yd kick is about 24 sec and 100 yd kick would be at best 1:59. In the U.S. Masters 1 hour swim contest, I've gone 4450 yd in the 60 minutes.

Also, if you can swim a reasonably quick 400 scm, then you can swim a quick 1500 m, 1900 m, and 3800 m. The 400 m mark is where we get into "distance swimming", just as the 1500 m/mile in running is the lower edge of distance running.

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You don't want to see my feet. But anyway, I can point my toes so the tops of my feet are below my shins, ie >180* I can also kick 50m SCM in about 35 secs with a board, about the same on my back with no board. Underwater is quicker, but I can't go 50m like that anymore. But that's not really the point.

I also wear a gigantic drag suit every day in practice. It's 2 sizes too big, I can almost guarantee that it creates more drag than your feet. It doesn't slow me down anywhere close to 20 secs per 100. Seriously, that's an eternity, that's the difference between a flat out 100 free and my 1500 pace.

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[quote ericmulk
GTO - I don't have a working camera right now but my ankle extension is very, very similar to yours, and i'm NOWHERE close to your wife's extension. I mostly do oly dist races and typically swim 20-22 min depending on the actual length of the course, i.e., some alleged "1500 m" have been as fast as 14:00 (short and/or with the current) and some as slow as 30:00 (long and/or against current). In the pool, my best 500/1000/1650 yd are 5:57, 12:20, and 20:40, but my best 25 yd kick is about 24 sec and 100 yd kick would be at best 1:59. In the U.S. Masters 1 hour swim contest, I've gone 4450 yd in the 60 minutes.

Also, if you can swim a reasonably quick 400 scm, then you can swim a quick 1500 m, 1900 m, and 3800 m. The 400 m mark is where we get into "distance swimming", just as the 1500 m/mile in running is the lower edge of distance running.[/quote]

Get that camera fixed! A picture is worth a thousand words... I could reduce my feet's frontal exposure (drag) by half it I could reduce from 8.5" in my pic to say 6" and to nearly zero at say 4". Now get a working camera and post a pic! (see the theme here)

Keep in mind that your entire foot is not creating drag against the water. If you are lifting your femur up at the hip so it is up and behind your hips (rather than legs dragging) and with a slight flex in the knee suddenly your feet are parallel to the water surface even with not great ankle flex.

Plus that's all pretty turbulent back there.

In any case, that's not what is keeping the op away from the front of the pack, especially in triathlon swimming.

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devashish_paul wrote:

Keep in mind that your entire foot is not creating drag against the water. If you are lifting your femur up at the hip so it is up and behind your hips (rather than legs dragging) and with a slight flex in the knee suddenly your feet are parallel to the water surface even with not great ankle flex.

Agreed and Jason's estimation is spot on as well. The tops of the feet like fins, shoot into the frontal area in the downkick, but after that they should tuck back into the shadow or wake of the torso.

When my legs drop I feel drag on my knee caps not my feet tops. My legs & ankles do look very inflexible in underwater video. ankles are at the 7" range sz 14. I can kick 25s in 30s.

Kicking performance comes from the lower abdominal & back muscles, hip flexors etc. Lot of work to get there.
As for AOS - my son is a 5 min 400M swimmer, has ~ 3 years into the sport and is 11 years old :) Yes it helps to be made of rubber. I am still recovering from the workouts he does 3x a week.

At 30s is a frontal shots you can see where the feet drop in. If this swimmer had droopy legs that would a different story.

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Oh, you wanted to know my long distance swim speed as well. Longest swim I've done in the last 5 years is an 800 free SCM, 9:34. That's averaging a bit under 1:12's. The SCY equivalent would be holding 1:05's for the 1000.

But my stats aren't all that relevant, because I'm probably not the guy you want to emulate.

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If they can't kick at Masters and you lap them every 150, then how long does it take them to kick 50's? They can't be stalling out or moving backwards or taking 1:58 to travel 25 yards are they?

Agreed, but unfortunately it would require much more than slight knee bend while kicking from the hips to get my feet parallel to the water. It takes and exaggerated hip flex just to get them to water surface!

For the benefit of this post, I will elaborate on my theory...

My intention of this post is to raise awareness of an issue (poor ankle flexion) that my be holding many MOP distance swimming triathletes up causing frustration with their lack of progress and speed.

Don't get too caught up in my estimate of 20sec/100m distance impact. Weather it is 10 sec or 20 sec isn't as important to these folks as understanding that genetics are making progress very difficult vs. someone with ideal ankle flexion.

My 20sec/100m impact (for distance swimming) estimate is based on a slow swimmer significantly above 2:00min/100m for a 1 mile pace and brakes down as follows:

+5 sec of direct drag caused by frontal area of feet
+5 sec impact from droopy legs (exacerbated by said feet among many other factors)
+5 to +10 seconds of fatigue caused by the above issues
Total = up to 20 second impact/100 meters caused by a genetic limitation many aren't aware of

(I've added the above to my original posting to help clarify this post)

My feet are nasty from sockless mountain running, but I can touch my toes to the ground in that position (with legs flat on the floor. i also have short feet.).

Currently I can hold 1:09/100y for something like a 30 minute swim for time. I can sprint kick a 25y in about 17-18 seconds (yay weights and other sports for helping out m'legs).

I'm 25, been swimming for nigh 20 years.

A lot of other good things being said by others here, but I thought I'd just give you the answer and let you draw conclusions, all though I don't think it really works like that (see Jason's first comment). Also, I've seen more than a few studies that actually indicate that the more ankle flexibility you have, the slower you run. When I "lock" my ankle while running, I tend to run faster (but it's harder work and more thinking).

Just my $.02

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also rule 5

Your drag suit makes me think of an extreme experiment to better appreciate the lack of ankle flexion. If a very good swimmer tried to swim a mile with ski boots on his feet (pretend the boots were not wider than no boots at all and simply locked the ankles) how much slower would the swimmer be? My guess is very much slower... Obviously this is an extreme example to emphasize a point and reality lies somewhere between perfect ankle flexion (flipper feet) and my ankles, but I could easily see this adding up to 10-20sec/100m over a mile swim...

I hear ya! When in shape I generally finish in the top 10% in rugged trail marathons and I suspect my ankles are helping me run faster and with lower potential for injury (twist and sprains). Also when in shape I'll finish in the top 20% in IM 70.3 triathlons, I'm a decent cyclist and runner, but only slightly above the bell curve in the water which I attribute partially to my ankles. I could spend 7 hours of effort in the pool each week to partially offset my swimmer ankle condition (but all things being equal my ankles will always make me slower at the same effort as someone with perfect ankle flexion) and maybe make a 10sec/100m pace improvement in my 1.2 mile swim pace or I can minimize my pool time to being able to swim comfortably at 1:50 to 2:00/100m and focus on the bike and run. It's all tradeoffs!!!

He wears fins for kick sets. I don't.

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I believe at the 90 degree extreme you are correct. I had an elitish 60+ runner who literally was locked in close to 90. When he kicked you actually "grabbed water" hooked the water and pulled his body BACKWARDS.

But for most humans at 30-45 degrees, your feet get into the shadow of the hip and knee and if you do that, your tibia is already pointing a bit upwards towards the water surface so the 30 degree flex looks more like 15 and it is all behind the leg in turbulent water.

What I have noticed for myself, that I have to "not flip into a doriflex" when I push down on the water with my tibia. I have this habit of relaxing the plantar flex and the ankle goes into dorsi and creates drag at the end of the 'down stroke" when the tibia is pointing a bit down. I need to keep my toes pointing generally to the back of the pool and not the bottom (even for a moment.....then it is like putting down the drag chute). This problem has nothing to do with ankle flex, but more with bad technique and inattention. I keep working on that during kick sets, but when I am swimming freestyle I keep catching the dorsi action. It is hard to break so many years of doing it badly.

Jason, should I just do a bunch of freestyle with fins. Also I have noted doing band pull, just keeping the plantarflex position really makes a diff rather than getting lazy and going into dorsiflex.

Not sure exactly what you mean. It's hard to figure this stuff out over the internet without seeing it, but when you say "dorsiflexed" does that mean back to like 90 degrees? Or just less pointed?

Good kickers don't actually actively point their toes in swimming (at least I don't), the ankles are just loose and the water pressure moves the foot to a pointed or less pointed position.

as far as the foot creating drag when it starts the upkick, I'm not sure that's true. on the upkick, it's the bottom of the foot that is essentially "sculling" water backwards, so there is a positive pressure on the bottom of the foot, and reduced pressure on the top if the foot.

The biggest thing you can do, and some people can never do it, some can, is learn to let your ankles relax so they can just flop loosely. I have no idea how to teach that.

As for the OP, he has more than sufficient ankle flexibility to kick faster than 60s per 25. There's other things he's doing wrong.

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FWIW I think there is an additional variable in this equation: the swimmer's build and how dependent on their kick they are to keep a good body position.

I have long, heavy legs that sink like bricks and a short torso to counter that. Without a wetsuit I need a decent six beat kick just to keep my feet near the surface. For the last three months I've been doing lots of long kick sets and I've worked a lot on ankle flexibility. I'm considerably less "cooked" now when I swim something like a 400.

Jason, I think you will find it impossible to scull with the foot on the upbeat.........The best you can hope for is for the foot to go from toes down at the end of the downbeat to moving back to pointed toes at the same rate that the body is moving through the water so the main face of the forefoot effectively doesn't move backward or forward relative to the water, it merely resets it's pointed toe position ready for the next downbeat without that motion causing drag or trying to sink the legs.

The biggest problem with people that struggle with their kick is that it is way too deep, as well as often combined with very wide scissor kicks to try and correct for poor stroke mechanics.
The extra depth and width puts the leg and foot at horrible high drag positions.
If you kick very deep, the foot starts to move in a forward arc, negating any forward propulsion that was developed at the start.

The secret to an effective kick is simple, foot speed and a high legs body position.
Also when you begin to swim fast, the feet start to kick in the big wave the swimmer takes with them down the pool, effectively milking some energy out of what is normally lost to the water.

If you think you have heavy legs and that is your problem, then you will never learn the secret of good body position.
I was like you, legs sink like a rock, blamed my low body fat and big cycling legs.
Well in reality, that is just bullshit. You sink because you haven't yet learned to float.
I was the same, thrash around in the pool and go no faster than 23min for a 1500m tri leg, learn how to swim properly and my times fell to low 17's, even though our pool closed for four months of the year because of cold.
My body composition never changed, my ankle flexion never change, I simply learned that you can use the water to help you or hinder you.
Learning to float and propel yourself a long with minimal drag should take precedence over all other aspects of your swim training.
You can't do an easy set if you are puffing along at AT just to do a lap. You will never build an aerobic base if every lap is at AT,

Learn how to float and streamline your stroke, and then see the times tumble.

It's a "scull" in that it's a redirection of water along a different vector. Not a scull like you would do with your arms. The point being that there's a positive pressure on the bottom of the foot. If you have your toes pointed straight back,, that positive pressure doesn't help you move forward. If you have your foot slightly dorsiflexed, it does.

Now, that said, it's a very small thing, but the main thrust of what I was saying is that you don't need to have your toes actively pointed on the up kick, as there isn't much foot drag there.

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Thanks! There is definitely no water pressure on the bottom of my foot during the "up stroke". Funny thing I was doing some kick on my back today and noted I am a "downstroke" only kicker. On my stomach pressure is on top of foot, on my back, on bottom of foot. I'll work on "both sides" which is what I do when kicking on my side (which is what I THINK I do during freestyle). I guess this is tomorrow's exercise....good luck, my pool is open every day 7- 1pm for lane swim this Easter Weekend!!! I should be on track for hitting 90K this month after a few missed days due to biz travel and work getting in the way.

Ankle flexibility has nothing to do why MOP are struggling with the swim. Triathletes will find any excuse they can so they don't have to actually work on their swimming.

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