Nice Blog Post.
Many triathletes coming from a run or cycling background have worthless kicks and this lays out some good tools for improvement.

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Robert Flanigan

I agree that kicking does seem to be the red headed step child of triathlon swim training, however I would question the efficacy of kicking in that manner for 1.2-2.4 miles. For sure breaking the surface is going to be way faster for 25 yards, but the energy cost for 30-60+ min may be far too high, and I'm not talking about the "save your legs for the bike/run" myth, I'm talking aerobic stress.

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You're right of course. If you are commenting on both the style and the intensity, I can't even kick that way for 100 yards. My assertion is simply that the the technique should remain the same at lesser intensitys and frequencys.

I don't think there is a distance or situation where reverting back to a boiling water kick is going to be more efficient. It probably doesn't appear so in the video, but I was equally spent after both of those 25 yard efforts. I hypothesize that breaking the surface allows greater foot speed with less energy for greater power and speed. The stopwatch backs this up.

An efficient 2.4 mile 2 beat kick will look considerably different than my feet slapping 25 yards, but it will not be boiling water.

ahhhhh...U want stir fry?

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Semper Fi

Motor, Suffer, Bonk

Nice work!

Police Academy Pt. 2?

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"The right to party is a battle we have fought, but we'll surrender and go Amish... NOT!" -Wayne Campbell

One of them for sure. The only line I remember from any of those movies.

The only other line I remember is

"You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to cable tv."

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Semper Fi

Motor, Suffer, Bonk

I thought #2 was pretty good. Watched it a bunch on cable.

Hrrrmmmmmm.....
I actually prefer something in between the 2 you had on the video. I do a lot of my kick analysis by how it sounds, the first one was to quiet, and the second too staccato for my liking, didn't get the more rumbly sound I really like in a kick. I like something much closer to the second one, just dropping the feet maybe half an inch so they don't slap so much. Also does the same thing hold true on your back? Something to investigate?
Just my 2¢

I agree with you. I was going for the extreme ends of the spectrum for illustrative purposes. And only kicking 25 yards.

I think the same principles apply on your back, but not sure how those principles would look in reality. I mean, we're not calling ourselves Finding Backstroke.

I like this. That said, for me, I don't really "prefer" any way, I prefer to let folks find their own sweet spot. But it seems that there are a lot of well-intentioned coaches out there who "fix" their swimmers kicks by keeping them under water, with, well, less than stellar results.

But, I think that Dave made a pretty good case (in his case anyway) for the idea that given equal energy going in (he went all out on both), the high set kick produced more velocity than the low one.

r.b.

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Loved the video. It answered a lot of questions -- some I didn't even know I had. But, your comments above are extremely useful, because it wasn't clear from the video or the accompanying discussion that one should NOT attempt a kick like that over a long distance tri. Can you try to add an example of what your kick would look like during an IM or a 1/2 IM? That's really what I'm trying to understand. Alternately, what about your kick would change, if you were doing a long course tri? The frequency of the kicks? The force? Both?

Thanks for the voice of support.

As far as adding an example of what my own, or anyone elses kick would look like over 2.4 miles, I would to have to say I can't. Allow me to explain. Paraphrasing a bit of the Finding Freestyle text, I would say that there are as many variations of the basic 2.4 mile flutter kick, as there are swimmers attempting the distance. We don't prescribe a particular style or rhythm of kicking. We guide through the process of finding these answers for yourself.

I can mention some commonalities of course. The kick being rhythmically connected to the arms being the most common characterisitic. This is a big part of our core curriculum.

As far as force goes, I would say that the forces involved would certainly go down. As far as the frequency, I would say it might go down. Not likely to go up, but it will stay the same for some. One thing many elite swimmers are able to do is switch between different kick rhythms both consciously and unconsciously as conditions dictate.

I am not only a founder of Finding Freestyle, but I am also a student. As such, I am not entirely certain where my kick will evolve to. But having been a swimmer for 30 years now, I can hypothesize that my frequency may remain the same (6 beat kicker). I am open to being wrong though. Open to the process that is.

Dave and Rob,

Big props to you guys. I have always considered the kick as something you just did to save yourself from lower extremity boredom...presently 5 weeks deep into the course and seeing significant improvement in times, after plugging away for the past 9 years and essentially treading water...anyhow thanks for the continued educational efforts!

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Coach at KonaCoach Multisport

Eileen,
Just a bit of clarification on your questions. I think in terms of ABSOLUTE frequency (kicks per minute), yeah, Dave's would decrease if he were swimming the front end of an IM, because his stroke rate would be lower - in other words, while his absolute frequency would decrease, his relative frequency in kicks per arm cycle would stay the same as he suggested.

From my eyeballing it, am guessing that he was kicking at around a rate of 6 kicks per second, whereas, if he were swimming the 2.4, he would be doing about 1 stroke cycle every 1.5+ seconds, which with his 6-beat kick would be 6 kicks every 1.5 seconds, which is a substantial decrease in absolute frequency.

The force would most certainly decrease as well.

r.b.

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Bringing you Tweets @ http://twitter.com/findfreestyle and Not just a bunch of drills - A Process.

Let me preface all of my statements I'm about to type with this:
- My overall knowledge of swimming and proper technique can fit in a thimble.
- I have never taken a swim lesson or watched an instructional video.
- Been swim training and doing triathlons for maybe three seasons. Just sort of jumped in the water and did what I thought made common sense when it came to technique. I know I have many flaws in my technique but I'm much better than most.
- That said, I managed top-10 AG M40-44 swims in both and olympic and sprint race this year. I was top 20% out of the water at IMFL this year with a 1:06. I'm not saying I'm Michael Phelps but I can somehow hold my own in the water.

What I notice first with bad swimmers is head out of the water and bad breathing techniques. Then it's always the kicking. People thrash away at the water like they're mad at it. Kickboxers don't kick that hard when they're trying to knock someone out.

What got me more alarmed was watching people kick like that while wearing wetsuits.

I have a very minimal kick that half-ass resembles a two beat kick and that was by accident and not by instruction. It just made sense to me. I pretty much don't kick at all with a wetsuit on. Just point my toes, pull with my arms and let the suit buoyancy do the posturing for me. I don't know if that's the best way to do it but it seems to work okay.

Yes, I would probably be a heck of a swimmer with some instruction.

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Two things..

I'm in week four of FF and in the middle of trying to figure out the kicking/timing/ankle/hip/boiling thingy so the blog post last night was absolutely perfect timing..thank you.

I'm not ready to jump on the FindingFreestyle band wagon yet, but I've got my hand on the railing and am running along side of it, ready to pull myself on-board. It's exciting to "find" new productive movements and timing patterns I didn't realize where there.

If the final 8 weeks of this journey are as productive as the first four, I'll be driving the FF bandwagon.

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"Good genes are not a requirement, just the obsession to beat ones brains out daily"...the Griz

Interesting. I'm a crappy swimmer, and the upside of that is that if I find technique improvements, they usually result in huge speed improvements. My breakthrough last week was that I was doing it all wrong kicking for years. I tweaked something in my motion, felt my feet break the surface, and started gliding way faster than I was before. After about half a length I noticed I was engaging my hamstrings way more than I was before. I don't exactly know what I was using before :-), but using more hamstring definitely improves things.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Thanks for the positive feedback, and glad the kick blog was helpful. Do you have any numerical indicators of just how productive these first 4 weeks have been for you?

regards,
r.b.

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Bringing you Tweets @ http://twitter.com/findfreestyle and Not just a bunch of drills - A Process.

Your understanding of the kicking motion is fundamentally wrong. There is no such a thing as an active "knee snap", and talking about it just makes teaching an effective kick more difficult.

Breaking the surface or not is a function of body position, not of kicking motion. Some as swimmers won't break the surface, those with poor body position, but telling them to break the surface with their ankles, when their body position is not correct, is again, not effective advice.

I'd recommend that you watch some underwater footage of elite swimmers. You will realize that kicking is indeed a motion that is "hip-based", with the muscles connected to the knee and the ankle being essentially passive structures.

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"You will realize that kicking is indeed a motion that is "hip-based", with the muscles connected to the knee and the ankle being essentially passive structures"

careful... next thing you know FD will be claiming that PowerCranks improves your swim.

Paulo,
I am going to have to disagree with you here. I submit that the hip based motion that you believe you are seeing is a RESULT of leveraging off of the foot. But really, his point was to debunk the notion that one should keep their feet below the surface when swimming. Do you subscribe to that notion?

Furthermore, I have to disagree with your belief that body position dictates the level of foot elevation. In fact, it is the connection in timing between the kick and the body rotation that dictates how well your position really is. This synchronization between the hips, the arms, and the legs REQUIRES active motion from the leg muscles. I think that it might be proper to say that the hips "initiate" or "cue" this motion, which doesn't make them an innocent bystander either, and also creates the impression that the hips are driving the kick.

Let's go even further into this idea that the kick drives the propulsion. If a person is doing a 2-beat kick, you could at least hypothesize that each time the hip moves the legs are driven by this motion (but I think you would be wrong). However, I would submit that it is fundamentally impossible for this to occur if a person is doing more than a 2 beat kick. In the case of a 4 or 6 beat kick, there are 2 and 3 times as many kick beats than there are hip oscillations. Are there little hidden motors which would be flicking the legs up and down in opposition to the rotation of the hips?

Dave might not be an elite swimmer, yet, but he most certainly has been an elite kicker for quite some time (able to hold his own nicely in kick sets with US Olympic Trials qualifiers). Would you submit that his leg muscles were just along for the ride there?

r.b.

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Bringing you Tweets @ http://twitter.com/findfreestyle and Not just a bunch of drills - A Process.

I don't believe in anything. This is the accepted concept by swimming experts, and it agrees with principles of biological propulsion. I am just trying for you guys to learn something from this. And there's no leveraging off the foot, the kinetic chain theory does not apply to swimming.


Does that notion needs debunking? I've heard many coaches emphasize having the ankles breaking the surface, and most good kickers break the surface, so I don't think debunking is needed here.


You can disagree all you want, but this is simple geometry. If your hips are riding 10-20cm below the surface, you'll have a hard time having your ankles breaking the surface. Where your feet end up depends on where your head/chest is.


You are confusing hip motion with body rotation. I would take this opportunity to remind you that elite freestylers rotate their hips along their longitudinal axis far less than most "swimming" coaches recommend.


Not sure who are you talking about here, I never mentioned anything about the kick driving propulsion. Again, kinetic chain theory does not apply.


Again, you're confusing hip rotation with hip motion.


"Elite kicker"?! Please keep this discussion serious.

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