To start out, I am new to swimming. I took basic swim lessons as a kid in my small town of 1000 people. I learned enough to not drown, but not much more. I don’t recall learning any specific stokes.
I have started adult swim lessons and they have been going well, but I always get completely dropped when we do kick sets. Many in the class finish their 50 kick set before I finish 25 yards. There are times where I honestly feel like I am not moving.
Now on to my main point. Today I swam 100 yards 4 different ways, not all out by any means, but trying to go at my steady state pace (I realize I am slow).
When I swam normally with a kick my time was 2:00
Swam with as minimal kick as possible, basically pulling with small kicks to keep my hips up was 1:59
Swam with pull buoy was 1:54
Swam with basically no kick, but added a scissor kick (one leg drifted towards bottom of pool, my other near the surface, then I pulled my legs together) was 1:55.
My effort levels for each of the above felt like this : mod fatiguing, mild, effortless, mild.
So my kick must be quite bad if it feels like I am swimming harder yet I am going slower. Should I work on my kick, or just keep going with a toned down kick? Since I am new to swimming I don’t know what kicks are legal or not, is my above described scissor kick legal? I was just messing around today and it really seemed to propel me forward unlike my flutter kick and it was not fatiguing since I would kick about once every other pull.
This means you are using your legs primarily for floatation, not propulsion. Put a band on your legs, & I guarantee they will sink to the bottom of the pool. Learn to swim with a band & pull bouy, then only with the band.
This means you are using your legs primarily for floatation, not propulsion. Put a band on your legs, & I guarantee they will sink to the bottom of the pool. Learn to swim with a band & pull bouy, then only with the band.
What, no advice to use fins and kick 1000 yd per workout, every workout??? No advice to sit on his feet to increase flexibility??? You may lose cred in the fish world:)
don’t continue kicking like that. bad form will not help you progress. that kick may seem ok now but as you improve and speed up it will hold you back and you’ll have to relearn a kick.
what may be you issue, as you name implies you are a runner, what runners tend to do is dorsiflex when they kick. that means that as your foot comes down you bring your toes up toward your head. you probably don’t realize it but as you finish your kick your foot is pointing straight down, thus taking away all benefit of the kick. in fact some people will go backwards in kick sets. you will have to learn to relax the foot through the end of the kick - this is why they say kick from the hips. you might try letting the heel fall to the outside a bit. this can help prevent the flexion. often people will try to tighten the calf muscle to prevent it but after a while it can cramp up - holding an isometric contraction for a half hour is hard. some use fins to make it too hard to dorsiflex because the fin has to push a lot of water. either way, its hard to get the feet to relax and make a kick effortless but it’s really important to reduce drag and that’s key in swimming.
** Since I am new to swimming I don’t know what kicks are legal or not,**
In freestyle, almost anything is legal except pulling on the lane line, standing on the bottom, etc. Some things are just better than others.
re: working on your kick, you should try to at least get to the point where it isn’t holding you back. You are probably kicking with your toes straight down, and too big (based on your times), and your legs are dragging low. the reason the scissor works for you is that it is pushing your legs back up, but is slightly more streamlined for you.
At least work on kick in warmup. If it is frustrating, no need to spend a lot of time just being frustrated, but spend a bit of time and your ankles will eventually loosen up (maybe).
I say maybe because I swam with one guy (years ago) who was a really good breaststroker, like 1:02 or 1:03 SCM good. give him a kickboard and he’d go backwards flutter kick, his ankles just had no flexibility, and they never got any better. Because of his kick, I think his best 100 free was barely under a minute.
Put a band on your legs, & I guarantee they will sink to the bottom of the pool. Learn to swim with a band & pull bouy, then only with the band.
I am a long time marathoner who had the same issue. I started my kick by lifting my knees (very bad). I also used a huge frog kick to rebalance after my breath stroke (also bad). Both immediately caused my to slow or stop. They were huge brakes in the water.
Then I used a band. Whoa! It was a “drowning assist device” for me. But, I then added fins (modified to be very short) which helped with my dorsoflexion. Between the two they changed my kick. It took a couple of weeks. My kicking is significantly improved in both form and speed. Periodically now, I will wear the bands just to make sure my form is proper. I still use the kick board in every session.
This means you are using your legs primarily for floatation, not propulsion. Put a band on your legs, & I guarantee they will sink to the bottom of the pool. Learn to swim with a band & pull bouy, then only with the band.
Good advice there, though I’ll warn it’s pretty hard for beginners - you’ll have to start with a loose band so you have some cheating, and progressively tighten from there.
At your 2:00/100 speed, odds are almost certain that there is an imbalance in your pull that you are offsetting with an errant scissor kick. You might not realize it and it won’t feel like you’re doing it at all, but take a video, and it’s certain it will be there. What you’re learning to do with the band (+buoy if needed) is to take that scissor kick correction out of the picture so any errors in your pull aren’t hidden. What’ll likely happen is that you find that you can’t swim at all for awhile - like less than 25 yards. But that’s good - when you re-learn to swim again without relying on that kick to keep you afloat, you will be have corrected most of the big pull imbalances that are prevalent in beginners at this speed. (It took me 6 weeks to fix mine when I was at your pace,but then I got a big jump in speed, like 10sec/100, with no added fitness.)
This is a useful thread. I am also a bit faster with a pull buoy than without. I used to basically go backwards with my kick as well but toughing it out with the kickboard has helped.
I have a suggestion for you that helped me a ton. Roka swim shorts, I have the sims Elite model. They weren’t cheap, I believe about $80 but worth every penny. I have been struggling to improve my pace with little results, got the shorts and saw immediate improvement. Now I’ve been working on my catch and pull and I actually feel the difference of a good stroke and a bad stroke, again an improvement on pace. Since I started with the shorts (4-6 weeks) my 100 time has dropped 10-15 sec. While the shorts aren’t a cure all, they gave me a lot of satisfaction and motivation for improvement. I still work on using my core to keep my legs up so no to use them as too much of a crutch, but being able to finally feel improvement is awesome. Good luck
Should the ankle band be used with a pull buoy or without? I have never used one but want to try it to work on the pull.
Without buoy.
But I guarantee you that the first few times you do it, you will need the buoy!
It’s def worth doing. I think it’s very hard to get the smoothing effect on your stroke that this ‘drill-swim’ teaches you. It’s not going to make you suddenly a speedster, but I do notice that a lot of beginner-intermediate swimmers have a good amount of unnecessary motion and bobbing with their stroke. The ankle band will accentuate any of those motions, and teach you cut all that extra stuff out, as without the legs to counterbalance any extraneous motions, they tend to get accentuated.
Weirdly enough, I actually think the ankle band is much less of a drill to keep the legs up as it is learning to smooth out the stroke. The legs tend to sink like crazy in those who aren’t good at this not because they’re so heavy, but because any bouncing fore-aft will end up pushing the legs more and more down. You’ll find that the only way to actually keep the legs up is to stay long and horizontal in the water, and minimally disrupt that position. It’s not about just pressing the chest - that’ll bob your legs up for half a second, but in the next second, the counterbob will drag them to the floor. It’s all about not disturbing the equilibruim of that flat position, and NOT about just pressing the chest like crazy.
Be careful with a band without a buoy. I’ve seen way too many people injure themselves with a band only.
Another suggestion with a greatly reduced chance of you injuring yourself would be to put some fins on, swim a lot in practice with them. Focus on keeping the core engaged, grabbing a lot of water and try to get higher on the water with as long a water line as possible. Do that for a lot of yards and gradually begin to take them off. Do a lot of kick sets without fins.
When you aren’t in the water, since you mentioned you are a runner, work on ankle flexibility, stretching out your hips flexors and increasing core strength.
You are welcome. I would caution you on doubling the yardage quickly. You want to make sure that have a plan in place for how you will increase the volume each week. If you are swimming by yourself, I wouldn’t increase the volume by more than 15-20% a week.
Be careful with a band without a buoy. I’ve seen way too many people injure themselves with a band only.
Another suggestion with a greatly reduced chance of you injuring yourself would be to put some fins on, swim a lot in practice with them. Focus on keeping the core engaged, grabbing a lot of water and try to get higher on the water with as long a water line as possible. Do that for a lot of yards and gradually begin to take them off. Do a lot of kick sets without fins.
When you aren’t in the water, since you mentioned you are a runner, work on ankle flexibility, stretching out your hips flexors and increasing core strength.
If you have any questions, let me know.
Tim
How do you manage to injure yourself with a band?
I’ve found that you do NOT need to use some super fast stroke rate to stay afloat without kicking - I can actually swim with the band at like 2:30/100yd pace with only the most minimal sporadic dolphin kick.
First, why would you ever want to practice swimming at 2:30/100 pace? You swim slow and you will swim slow.
The reference to the injury would be your shoulders and I have seen a lot of swimmers over the years get shoulder injuries from using a band only. It’s the angle of the body position in the water that the band will put you in. The angle will put a lot of pressure on the top/front of the shoulder.
First, why would you ever want to practice swimming at 2:30/100 pace? You swim slow and you will swim slow.
The reference to the injury would be your shoulders and I have seen a lot of swimmers over the years get shoulder injuries from using a band only. It’s the angle of the body position in the water that the band will put you in. The angle will put a lot of pressure on the top/front of the shoulder.
Tim
I certainly don’t try and swim slow - just saying you don’t need to be motoring through the water to do it.
I also don’t understand how the band will adversely affect your body position - with the band you pretty much HAVE to swim as flat (fore-aft I’m talking about, not side-side as you can still rotate) as possible in the water, or your legs will sink. How is this a bad thing?
I’m only giving you my experience with bands over the years. It’s based on either competing or coaching swimming over the past 30 years. With a band on you will never be completely flat on the water.
At that pace you mentioned, you are not practicing anything of use to make you faster in the water. Even the best swimmers don’t swim completely flat with a band only. The body position will be angled down in the water and will put more pressure on the front of the shoulder due to that angle. Please see the video of the link below and I hope that is more helpful:
I’m only giving you my experience with bands over the years. It’s based on either competing or coaching swimming over the past 30 years. With a band on you will never be completely flat on the water.
At that pace you mentioned, you are not practicing anything of use to make you faster in the water. Even the best swimmers don’t swim completely flat with a band only. The body position will be angled down in the water and will put more pressure on the front of the shoulder due to that angle. Please see the video of the link below and I hope that is more helpful:
Again, I do not train at 2:30 pace. I only brought it up in case you were making the point that you needed to have high turnover to stay afloat with the band, as some erroneously think.
I also don’t think that video gives the band a fair shake. There other videos out there that show that you can definitely maintain a full horizontal body position in the water without kicking whatsoever. When the swimmer in your linked video slows down his stroke rate, he lets his legs drop ridiculously (it’s REALLY obvious in the last 5-10 seconds, no way that your legs have to drop that much with lower stroke rate), and I think that’s intentional. I’m far from a good swimmer, but I think anyone who can do a band can outperform that guy’s body position even with same stroke rate in those final 5-10 sec.
You can always put in a tiny dolphin kick to get them back up occasionally that doesn’t significantly detract from the utility of the smoothness gains of the band.
** Since I am new to swimming I don’t know what kicks are legal or not,**
In freestyle, almost anything is legal except pulling on the lane line, standing on the bottom, etc. Some things are just better than others.
re: working on your kick, you should try to at least get to the point where it isn’t holding you back. You are probably kicking with your toes straight down, and too big (based on your times), and your legs are dragging low. the reason the scissor works for you is that it is pushing your legs back up, but is slightly more streamlined for you.
At least work on kick in warmup. If it is frustrating, no need to spend a lot of time just being frustrated, but spend a bit of time and your ankles will eventually loosen up (maybe).
I say maybe because I swam with one guy (years ago) who was a really good breaststroker, like 1:02 or 1:03 SCM good. give him a kickboard and he’d go backwards flutter kick, his ankles just had no flexibility, and they never got any better. Because of his kick, I think his best 100 free was barely under a minute.
Well, obv his feet flexed pretty well for breaststroke kick, just not for flutter kick. I’m the same way, my breast kick has always been faster than my flutter kick, both on the stomach and on the back. My dolphin kick is about equal to my breast but it takes more exertion so for a 200 or longer kick, my breast kick is my fastest. And yes, I could never do sprint free very fast:)