You want triathletes to work harder on their kick? Heresy !! Burn the witch!!
I for one am interested to try this out.
Even if I don't think it works for me I applaud your thinking. I've taught too many people (triathletes) that don't want to learn to kick. Floaty pants, flippers,pool buoys etc all have their place but WE use them too much as a crutch so WE don't need to learn to kick.
Kicking is. Combination of coordination and very specific conditioning.
I am pretty lazy with my kick but usually do roughly 20% of my workouts kicking. I could do more or really just work harder but I do a lot more than most triathletes.
I get I kicking is not glamorous , it's hard work and in long distances you don't kick hard. We all have limited time to swim but learning to kick effectively and efficiently we could all be a little faster.

I use the pull buoy and or floaty shorts when I'm warming up or when I'm tired. I don't feel they do a hell of a lot for my technique. In fact I think the buoyancy shorts are counter-productive unless used sparingly. I used them for 3 months straight when I had a shoulder injury, I was swimming great, but when I ditched them for my jammers, I felt horrible in the water. The buoyancy shorts allow you to swim with a great neutral body position without having to work on it, take them off and your hips sag, because you're not used to having nothing to support them.

Thanks. The kick board drill is the bomb! It's totally how you want to position your body for freestyle, based on a "debrief" swim this morning at Kits pool. I could visualize the board on my chest and swim accordingly.

This kick board chest drill is not for developing the kick per se. With all the wetsuits in play, and massive amounts of neoprene slathered around the legs the kick is unfortunately rendered pretty much useless, except for a start or finish sprint.

It's a bit of shame we don't covet the kick, because we miss out on a great phenomena I call "Supercharging" . Every great swimmer pulls water into their kick, then uses their kick to further accelerate the water supplied by the pull. For that reason alone, it's worth developing a kick. Nobody even knows this exists. All I've heard is "Nathan Adrian relies on his kick", or "Ledecky uses a high kick". That's BS - these swimmers are leveraging their kick. They are taking fruit off the pull and supplying it to make the kick more effective.

OK so this morning I grabbed a kick board and didn't have that rubba strap. I ended up just kicking with the board on my chest +my snorkel and discovered a great way to practice kick!! You just zoom along and kicking is free and easy. Hallelujah!

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My feeling is they are counter-productive, in that while your body position is the water is assisted, your body's structure or alignment is actually pushed in the wrong direction. And if you were to drive toward the correct swimming structure, posture - then the rear flotation interferes with being able to swim.

So with front flotation, you must drive your body into the correct alignment and you are assisted by being higher in the water. But as you can see in the demo video - I am floating totally level which is a very fast profile to be in. Next I'll ditch the snorkel and try breathing which should be easy because there is that flotation from the board.

Also in the demo video I am having to use a pretty long almost catch-up style stroke to keep my arm mass forward for balance, as well as pulling under as discussed earlier.

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PULL BUOYS: There was an interesting podcast posted on Swimsmooth, two very experienced triathlon coaches discussing what kit they use and drills etc. Of course the topic of pull buoys and band swimming came up. Both coaches were kinda vague on these.

So based on my understanding of swim posture, I hit the water to find out if a pull buoy could be used in a different way (than I normally would) and if there are benefits.

Here's a video of the results & reasoning why:
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I did a search on Youtube and found that Brenton Ford of Effortless Swimming (great channel) saying exactly the same thing.
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So my conclusion is a pull buoy is a great tool to use, as part of a workout we typically see swimmers doing. However I know swimmers that are on them 100%. Of course without the knowledge above, I doubt they are using them "correctly". Because it's work to force the buoy down and get that strength workout happening, you wouldn't want to do that for an hour!

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That said, using those buoyancy shorts has benefited my swimming as I got to feel what good, horizontal, body position felt like. So going back to jammers, I could instantly feel my body position was wrong and have been working hard on correcting it.

I'm curious how you felt the buoyancy shorts helped with your shoulder injury? I've been dealing with slight shoulder injuries that I'm trying to manage while training for a HIM. partially making sure I don't crossover helps and really during the swim my shoulders actually feel good and loosen up. Wondering if I should try buoyancy shorts

I think you're missing something important. A fantastic way to use a pull buoy is to give you some time with wonderful body position and feel how fast it is. And then you promptly take it away and swim without it with as little as a break as possible, feeling how much drag is created if you don't keep your feet up and your body straight. It also forces a better back arch and correct hand entry and extension angle. The trick is to use it, then take it away, then use it, then take it away, many times in the same workout. Using it shows you what works, while taking it away shows you what you're doing wrong. Every time you take it away, you crave how fast you were before, and you just were in a great body position, so you instinctively try to replicate the correct position without the buoy. And you know how to replicate it because you just did it.

Repeated over and over, your swimming without a pull buoy becomes more and more like your swimming with a pull buoy. The arm workout is a nice bonus.

Sample set:

400 with pull buoy, 100 without, zero rest in between.
20 seconds rest.
300 with pull buoy, 200 without, zero rest in between.
20 seconds rest.
200 with pull buoy, 300 without, zero rest in between.
20 seconds rest.
100 with pull buoy, 400 without, zero rest in between.
20 seconds rest.

You can also start your warmup with the pull buoy, very first thing when you get in, to set the tone for the rest of the practice for what proper body position feels like. Works amazingly well.

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Basically anything that gave me added buoyancy (pull buoy, shorts) or extra propulsion (kicking harder, fins) helped, meaning I wouldn't have to pull so hard and shoulders got some relief. I have modified my technique and my shoulders are feeling better. Still a few niggles here and there. For your cross-over issue, try high elbow recovery, the likelihood is that you're a "swinger" which means your arm is swinging round in a circular motion as opposed to a high elbow when it recovers. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it often leads to a cross-over because the arm is swinging round and also means your thumb will probably enter first. Both of those lead to shoulder problems.

I just want to be 100% clear about swim body position. For me (and other youtube videos I've seen) it's counter-intuitive.

• Press your core shorts, pull buoy, floaty pants etc. DOWN to the bottom. That is try to sink them by rotating your pelvis forward. Do not let them float up & ride easy.
• Doing this flattens your lower back and as a result drives your lungs/chest down into the water - which is the ultimate goal.
• By driving your chest down, your overall body position rises in the water

Now, with spine aligned and level with the surface, average body position is riding higher, you can swim like the blazes.

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Now you got me thinking....what about taking an old wetsuit and making an upperbody tanktop? I remember people were making their own lava shorts with an old wetsuit, so make the same for the upper body. I'd think learning to drive the chest down while it is being supported by the bouyancy would be the feeling you are after wearing the wetsuit tank top right?

I sort of did that yesterday, but not for floatation. I have a long sleeve Gooru top that is a pain to get on, so I cut the sleeves off. It's for water-skiing.

I took it for a swim anyway, just to see how it felt.

Results
1. Oh man a wetsuit & even this T-shirt top not designed for swimming is downright brutal!
2. Yes in fact you do have to kick yourself up onto the extra floatation, and that is a good thing. But hating the drag-chute resistance of the material & fit so much I didn't do more than 100M.

I would be cool to try this with a proper swim suit. I don't have one right now I would sacrifice though, they are all in good shape.

I'll say this - I would like to take the edge off the lake water as it cools off here. Cover my torso but not my legs, because I don't like training in a full suit.

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Cool. Thanks. Yeah a few weeks ago when my shoulders were bothering me more I just wore fins more which helped. Yeah. I'm a "swinger". Went to a swim smooth clinic and had video done and it was obvious especially with my right arm which is the shoulder that gave me the most trouble. I've worked to correct the cross over issue and am making good progress. I've worked on my flexibility because I think that contributes. I was will swim along black line and think about keep my hand on either side of the black line and things like that to help me reaching out straight rather than crossing over. Working on my catch and feel for the water helps too because the better I get at that I can get a feel for the catch coming in wrong.

Shoulder injuries apart I am confused about Huub pants and pull buoys (and fins where allowed in the pool, not in mine though). I have been born with sinky legs so my input - output performance in the water will always be modest however much I try to improve my technique (I have just had video analysis). By contrast there are those in my local pool who are without doubt 100% pull buoy addicts and who go bombing along continually, relieved of the drag from legs. These have been joined more recently by a few who wear buoyancy (Huub?) pants with apparently the same effect - a dramatic increase in performance. The temptation is of course to join them.
The Stoic in me questions this. The acid test must surely be if having used either of these "artificial" aides, and then put them aside, the user is "net" any better off than before. May be there is correct and an incorrect way to use them but my gut feeling is that if so most users don't observe it. The suspicion is that they are little more than a temporary way of getting a quick-fix feel-good downhill speed swim sensation which, once removed, evaporates and leaves the user feeling like I did on the few occasions that I have been allowed to use fins in a pool.
Pull buoys cost coppers but for fancy buoyancy pants you are talking big money. For the present and until someone can convince me otherwise I intend to persevere with my kick board routine through gritted teeth, at the expense of my ego but in the hope that in time it will condition the legs, physically and technique-wise, to make the best of a bad job more effectively than with either of these two aids. I am now sold on the merits of downhill swimming but having seen on the video a clear case of the opposite, over-gliding made easier with the aid, I am almost coming to the view that they could be counter-productive.

This year I've started working with a triathlon coach. Shes had me do some pull buoy/paddlesets for purposes of building some strength in my shoulders and those sets also including jumping out of the pool to do push-ups. That has helped me tremendously to eliminate the shoulder issues I had last year. But she certainly does not have me use pull buoy other than those days where she wants to work on my upper body strength or she's trying to save my legs for an upcoming hard bike workout. Most sessions are without toys. It seems like it's like most things in life. All in moderation

Might I diplomatically suggest that yours is a "special" understandable case and I have serious doubts if most of the folk who I see using these things in my pool could quote post-shoulder-injury-rehab as a justification!

Strap your foot/ankle to a brace keeping it at 90 degrees while you swim or even kick with a board. This is a shocking and painful experience for those that have never had such an issue with swimming. For many of us, kicking is just impossible due to a lack of ankle flexibility. Thus a market for something to keep your back end up. I dare someone to post a video of such an attempt.

Your graphic is the best thing I've ever seen. For years I was a passive passenger on a pull buoy, just recently realizing I was missing out on an opportunity to work my legs and lower abdomen by doing what you've drawn. I swim with a snorkel, alternating buoy with streamlimed kicking all while trying to mimic the same lower back position. I find myself wondering, ah ha? Is that what people mean when they say pull belly button to spine? B/c that verbal cue has always been a mystery to me. Anyway, having figured out the push pull buoy down thing on my own I kinda feel your note is cheating - you're giving away my hard won secret for free - damn you!

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To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive.

I never thought of your your legs drafting in the moving water that your upper body has already started to move, but that makes a ton of sense. Do you think this is why kicking while swimming with arms "feels" a lot easier than just kicking only, or do you think most of use can't kick as hard when pulling with arms too due to blood flow being spread between arms and legs, whereas when you kick only, blood is all going to move your forward with legs only.

My layman's take on that is simply that the arms are one helluva lot more efficient form of FS propulsion than the legs, and when doing the full stroke it matters relatively little for most of us whether the legs are contributing much to forward movement or not. Such as when using the pull buoy when I suspect the contribution is absolute zero!
Having studied both videos I'm not so sure I can emulate the strengthening arguments and "push down" the thing in the water. What did strike me was that in the second video the forward entry contradicted directly the main message I was given in my recent SwimSmooth video session - to avoid overgliding and instead swim "downwards" at the front. The video man was able to get away with overgliding without sinking precisely because of the rear end support. Take away the PB or pants then what he or she was doing would result in an inefficient angle - this was however being masked. [this applies to me in strong contrast to a moderately well endowed female at my pool whose buoyancy is such that she could break all the rules and still achieve good speed with minimal effort and without artificial aids)

Haha probably so. I think my coach sees them as one tool in her toolkit. But not something she plans for me to use all the time. To be fair, I'm not a fast swimmer and my coach has been working with me for IM Chattanooga and swimming won't be the primary focus of improvement.

They're all ways to do the same thing. You have two big balloons. They're called your lungs. Putting those inflated windbags underwater will cause your body to try to equalize (Archimedes... something...) and push up. This is the same reason it's important to keep your head down, your core straight, and legs up, as Dan has been banging on about.

A pull buoy can teach you to put your legs up, or it can become something that you rely on to compensate with.

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'It never gets easier, you just get crazier.'

I can go along 100% with the theory and aims of the exercise. I just have to figure out now how to reverse the laws of physics and get my windbags to sink when what I was taught in school was that divers and the like use air to rise upwards. Without the assistance of PB's.

There are two kinds of pool toys. Some make things easier, so you can focus on other areas (pull buoys, snorkels, fins); others make things harder to get us to focus on that area (fist gloves, ankle bands). He's using the former, you created the latter.

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