Ya, me too and this is despite having swum since age 3. And there are lots of peeps like us, in fact i would say that, if you looked at all swimmers as a whole including fitness swimmers, tri-guys, and of course pure swimmers, maybe only 10% at the most have a strong enough kick to be "hip-driven" swimmers. Of course, among pure swimmers this %age is much higher, prob around 50-ish % but swimmers are self-selected in part for their kicking ability. While there are occasional exceptions like tigerpaws who apparently became an excellent kicker with some work, generally i think a person figures out pretty quickly whether they can kick any given type of kick or not, e.g., i can kick breaststroke just fast as my freestyle, and i can certainly kick a 500 breast consid faster than i can kick a 500 free. And i learned this pretty fast when i started swimming competitively as when we kicked flutter kick, i got left behind by the good kickers, but when we switched to breast, now i could out-kick some of those same people. In fact, i think it is quite common to be able to kick breast well but not the other three strokes. Breaststroke is the only stroke where i can really feel the "kinetic chain", and i feel it in breast b/c i can kick it almost as fast as i swim it, so obv the kick is totally integral to my breaststroke but only a minor part of my freestyle, which 99% upper body.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

E: I don't think you use fins to become a better kicker. You cannot develop a fast turnover style without powerful midsection. And swimming with fins is the best way I know of to do that.

That is pretty much how my coach explained it to me. Again, I don't come from the swim background some of you do so it was all new to me. Backstroke was another area where my progress went up rapidly when I learned how to swim from my core. At least how I make free/back work in my head now is that I look at the stroke with recovery as my focus, makes it click for me. Getting a nice anchor, whatever that is for my skill level and then my core takes over and I leverage the rest of my skinny ass over that point with the weight and momentum of my recovering side in tow. It was a sense that I stopped ripping my arms through the water and started to focus on just holding that catch side in place. The anchor thingy conversation never clicked until I learned how to kick and kick from my core. I was one of those people who had gaps and pauses too, speed killer, once the kick/core drove my rhythm that was all gone too so much easier for me to keep everything grooving along like wlaking down the street. more or less. Not saying this is the magic only way, but damn what a journey it was to learn and popped the top off the roof of what I thought I could do in the water. I literally beat the water into submission for 20+ years. Ahhhkk!

A - I've been mulling over this idea for 24 hrs or so and i fully understand what you're saying. OTOH, it seems to me, as a swimmer with a mediocre kick at best, that swimming with fins tends to make me use my legs for speed more than i would w/o fins, and hence when i take the fins off, nothing has been gained. If anything, my timing and speed are adversely affected. For someone like you who can kick 200s (scm) leaving on 3:10, the situation is completely different since obv you get a lot of propulsion out of your kick, whereas i get very little on freestyle. Breast is my only stroke where my kick is a vital part of the stroke; in the other 3, my legs are just along for the ride doing a little balancing.

In sum, i continue to believe that the utility of swimming w/ fins depends on how well you can kick w/o fins. In the end, we may have to just agree to disagree:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

If I'm understanding everything correctly, I think the point is that in order to build the core muscles required to elevate your legs in the water and rotate properly from the core with any sort of kick, regardless of the actual effectiveness of that kick, you have to put yourself in the proper position for those muscles to work. Fins allow you to do that. So even if you are a weak kicker and you will always be a weak kicker, you still gain in body position and some extra drive from the hips, even if you remain shoulder driven, just a more effective shoulder driven.

Perhaps but i've never been able to feel any "drive" in my hips but rather almost all from my arms/shoulders. I have done a fair amount of swimming and kicking w/ fins, but very little in the past few yrs, mainly b/c my experience with fins in the past was that they really weren't helping me any per se. I've always felt that the harder i pulled, the faster i went and hence the higher i ride in the water and the better my body position. The hips and legs are just along for the ride, and of course to push off after flip turns. Also, it's not like i just started swimming last year but rather i am a life-long swimmer since age 3. Further, i can definitely feel the impact of my kick in breaststroke, and it is very diff from freestyle. So i know what it feels like for the kick to have an impact and it just not seem to happen in freestyle per se:)

In sum, i think there are a few diff varieties of freestyle depending on a person's strengths and weaknesses.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

hey guys, I know that you're trying to split the atom here regards kicking 200 on 3:10, fins etc, but the OP from what I can gather seems to be a beginner swimmer, not someone trying to get to national.
they want to know how to " engage the core " which is what has been recommended to him ( assuming a him for the sake of the post ).
one response was, use fins.
and that for the OP is a great idea. maybe use it for 50% of your swims to get a better handle on swimming relaxed and stress free. some days use them more, some days less, some days not at all
basically anything that'll help you swim more, in a relaxed manner is a good thing. clenching anything is a bad thing. just focus of the positive parts of swimming, the drivers so to speak.
fins, yes
pull bouy yes
pull bouy and paddles yes
swimmers snorkel, yes.
ankle bands, --- wait until you're a stronger, smoother more relaxed swimmer

good luck and welcome to the pool.

Avago - Good point, we were prob deviating way off from the OP's concerns. Good for you to bring in a "reality check".

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

In order to build the core muscles required to elevate your legs in the water, you first need to identify those muscles and what it feels like to engage them. Lie on you stomach on the ground, with your arms pointed parallel to the ground above your head (like streamlining in the water). With your legs straight, raise your feet off the ground. You'll feel muscles in your back, your hips, and your legs (hamstrings?). Flex those muscles while swimming, and your legs will be at the surface. It takes very little strength to flex them in the water. It requires no special drills or whatnot to do this: just a focus on engaging those muscles and putting in the yards. Eventually, you won't even think about it.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I think this is pretty common. Everyone says "engage the core" or "swim from your core", but don't really know what that means, some coaches included. They often reference a golf swing or bat swing, but that is NOT the movement you make in the water. Someone just mentioned that swimmers don't particularly have rock hard abs, which is true, but if you look at the other side of your core, or back, you notice quick that swimmers backs are defined and often disproportionate to the rest their physique. That's an obvious nod to the fact that you should be pulling with your back muscles and not so much your arm muscles. Abs still hold everything straight and tight, but it's the back that is to be 'engaged'. So how do you engage the back? You have to rotate. Pulling in front of you cuts off the back muscles, but pulling to the side engages them. So you rotate to the side when you pull so that the lats can play along. That's where it gets more muddy. Do the hips lead the rotation via a good kick, or do the shoulders lead the rotation and the kick just provides a little stability? That's a whole different thread.

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Badig| Strava

So about ankle band work... I don't think I fish tail but initially I felt like the letter L moving through the water, and was really digging my straight arms deep to try to pull my legs up (so becoming the letter U upside down!). I feel like this helped me find a fulcrum of sorts between my front end being lower and my legs coming up. However, now with better arm bend (maybe now going through the water more like a parenthesis), I still can't do a 50 m lap w/o it being a VO2 effort. I guess my question is, if core strength gets better, does the ankle band business become less like drowning and more like swimming? (I swear I thought I might die the first time I did this drill.)

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

I'm the wrong person to ask about band swimming: without a small pull buoy between my ankles it's a max effort for me to make 50m. With a small buoy+band I can cruise.

Funny - I too am a AOS just getting into multi-sport in the last 5 months or so. I have done ok in the pool so far, like 1:50/100. Not fast by any means of the word at all, but considering where I started, I'll take it for the time being. Today I toss on fins for the first half of a 10x200 set. Second set after a hard 10x100. I typically come in around 3:50 for a 200. With fins was coming in around 3:10. Take fins off and swim a 3:35. I only say that all to say that something felt different right away after having had the fins on. Something clicked and I was much higher in the water. As I got further into the set and tired, everything evaporated again, but I can definitely see as a new swimmer how using fins to understand the feeling and muscle engagement required to be on top of the water can pay dividends and quickly...

Congratulations on your improvements. It's great to know that training on the Vasa Swim Erg has been instrumental for your success. In reading your post, this video by Karlyn Pipes came to mind, as she discusses proper rotation and core connection. Hope you find it useful.




and this one by Coach Eric Neilsen shows another way to use the Vasa Swim Erg to achieve strength & power in a high elbow catch while integrating some core stability and rotation.



Keep in mind that in distance swimming, proper use of the core muscles is for stability and balance in the water, which counteract side to side movement or leg splaying, all of which create more drag, thus slowing the swimmer.


For a full Freestyle video clinic, check out this one by Karlyn Pipes and other coaches:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLndFq9-c_rxD_obLvtKa70K71S0SCGCyh