As per Dan’s piece on correcting the cross over?
You go out and buy some surgical tubing and wrap it around your legs, giving enough room for a compact kick, but not enough to allow for wide splaying.
I just tried doing this with some, what I will call as bungee chord, the problem is, if you just do a ring, around the legs, a one looper, it floats off immediate; you would have to, in my opinion, tie one loop around each leg, tightly, with one connecting line, with appropriate tension, across to the other leg, otherwise it floats off. I’ve checked all the swim shops online. I don’t see squatola for shackles.
If you use tubing and leave room for anything more than a 3-5in kick it’s coming off. Usually we just tethered the feet together.
I saved the “gristle” I cut off from the bottom of my wetsuit when I trimmed the legs a bit to make removal easier. Both feet and ankles fit easily inside one of the loops and make for a comfortable shackle.
It works well for me. However, there’s not much stretch room for kicking.
In the past I also cut strips off a car-sized inner tube. That worked just as well but wasn’t as comfortable as the neoprene from the wetsuit.
I use this a lot. Not so much to correct a wild kick, but to help learn/correct body position. If you minimize the kick and at the same time take away any floatation aid (pull bouys) you are really forced to push down your head/shoulders/chest in order to bring up your legs/feet.
For this I take an old bike tube and cut about 6 inches out of it shorten it, then tie it back together. Then fold it into a double figure 8. Then you just slip a foot into each loop of the figure 8. This should hold your feet together so that you can’t really kick unless you really try hard to cheat it.
I was coached as a junior by a 1500m champ. We used bike tubes cut to size. When I now swim in the pool over lunch times I always notice that a lot of the people swimming have good upper body “positioning” but they drag their legs at an angle OR they kick like mad. I use a 2 beat kick. I almost don’t kick and use a very long stroke and very streamline position; that works for me. My wife (a good biker) is now keen to get going this year (after the birth of our 1st) with her 1st Tri. I’m “coaching” her by using the same technique and although the “bump” has gotten bigger I have seen HUGE improvements in her swimming technique. Her leg position and kicking was/is her main drawback.
A: Yes I think it works… did for me.
Go to the hardware store and get a wheelbarrow tire innertube. Put a little air in it, make a half-twist in it so it forms a figure-eight, and slip each foot through one side. If it slips off, put a little more air in it. With the wider tube, it won’t cut into your ankles.