Does kicking with fins actually impair your ability to kick without them?
You can certainly move a lot more water with fins, but what happens when you take them off? Do you lose the feel of the water that you have when you kick barefoot?
Does anyone disagree?
you loose the feel for about 20 seconds. Fins help make you a better, stronger kicker. They are the foot version of paddles, good to use sometimes but not all the time.
Feel of the water is more important under your hands, methinks. Though the feel of water fluttering off one’s feet is nice.
Kicking with fins does not impair your ability to kick without them. It works your leg muscles a bit more, is good for teaching people not to “scissor” when they kick, and can help get a little more ROM out of your ankles.
Can help with normal kicking, methinks!
PS. if you want “feel of the water” kicking, swim breaststroke. You should feel the water on the insides of your feet, right under the medial edge/ a bit of the arch. Far more important there than in fluttery kicking
My kick has improved since I started using fins. I now keep my ankles much looser, and for some reason their use has encourage me to have a much more even rhythm to my kick. I use the fins for drills and short/fast kick sets. I don’t use them for long swim sets or anything like that.
My coach uses fin work for:
funny i use fins for warm up drills and I can definitively say that I am addicted to using them for drills, doing kick on side drills without them for me is now pure torture. That said I never use them for regular swim sets and there it does not bother me at all so my guess is just like with other training aids, if you use them too much (as I do with my drills) you will become dependant on them, if used with in reason you will likely see the benefits the others have mentioned.