If you knew with certainty that a 24,000 yard kicking month would net you more gain in swim speed than private lessons, master’s, Total Immersion, Slowman’s guppies, Finding Freestyle, SwimSmooth or The Race Club, would you do it?
For the majority of you, that is exactly what you need. A properly devised, variable, 600-1000 yard kick set every day for a month. Then go back to whatever coach, system, process or gimmick you previously employed and see how it goes.
I can see this approach dominating the next swim challenge.
Edit - I don’t mean no swimming. You can keep your 2 x 2000 yards or whatever. But you kick 800 a day, everyday.
Doesn’t this assume that you’re doing it in a reasonably correct fashion to start with?
Practicing an improper technique over 24,000 yards isn’t going to yield much gain. I’m not being argumentative toward your point, but rather highlighting the possibility that most people (myself included) kick like the rock fish. That aside, I’m sure that your hypothesis is entirely plausible.
My hypothesis assumes kicking to be an activity in which doing it more improves the mechanics. And my 800 yards kicks sets will never be… Kick 1 x 800.
I’ve done my time in countless kick sets throughout the ages. What I find interesting on this topic is that I’ve never had a swim coach (14 in total, 1 was on the Oly team but didn’t make the squad) actually teach proper kick technique nor give much feedback on kicking style. The most common feedback ever spouted out is/ was, “Don’t bend your knees” and “Kick from your hips.”
IME- the combo of kicksets and those 2 comments were enough for maybe 60% of the team to become efficient kickers. That meant 40% of the team struggled during kick sets, including some of the better swimmers. I saw no correlation between kick ability and freestyle times (which pissed me off as one of the stronger kickers but no where near the top of the team in speed).
I suspect just swimming everyday would improve my swimming, whether it be 1x800 kick (which is giving me cramps just thinking about it–and I suppose that’s your point), 1500 swim, or whatever.
Why the kick, specifically? What kinds of gains do you expect/predict?
I suspect just swimming everyday would improve my swimming, whether it be 1x800 kick (which is giving me cramps just thinking about it–and I suppose that’s your point), 1500 swim, or whatever.
Why the kick, specifically? What kinds of gains do you expect/predict?
If you knew with certainty that a 24,000 yard kicking month would net you more gain in swim speed than private lessons, master’s, Total Immersion, Slowman’s guppies, Finding Freestyle, SwimSmooth or The Race Club, would you do it?
For the majority of you, that is exactly what you need. A properly devised, variable, 600-1000 yard kick set every day for a month. Then go back to whatever coach, system, process or gimmick you previously employed and see how it goes.
I can see this approach dominating the next swim challenge.
Edit - I don’t mean no swimming. You can keep your 2 x 2000 yards or whatever. But you kick 800 a day, everyday.
I generally will do between 150 and 200 per workout, as “rest” between other things. If I went up to 800 per workout, I’d likely blow my entire workout allotment of time on just that kick. Then, when I did my triathlon swim, I’d don my wetsuit and not kick at all, but rather concentrate on keeping my toes pointed.
SO - the question from me is - where’s the benefit? Right now, as a late-onset swimmer who is still very much learning, how do the kick sets alone help with freestyle? My current kick pattern when swimming is not timed; no pattern or one beat kick, or opposite leg to arm, or anything like that. Just enough foot movement so I know that my feet are still somewhere near the surface. I still do the kick drills because it keeps me from scissoring, but where else will such work benefit me? I’ll spend a whole month at 500y per workout if you can explain WHY it would benefit.
I’m not getting to the pool every day. I just don’t have time for that much driving and changing. However, my old coach in SA used to say that A&M did 70% of their practices as kicking. I have no idea if that’s true, but he had us kick a lot (I was working out with a high school team) and I had my best swim splits ever.
I’m upping my kick portion significantly, to 500/swim (x3 a week…and the 500 is being split into 50 meter increments throughout the session) so not quite what you’re recommending…but…well time issues blah blah. Point is I’m working towards it.
My two questions:
-Fins, or no fins? I actually picked up fins earlier today and will be taking them into the drink tomorrow for that 500…
-board or no board? The best argument I’ve heard against board is that it screws with your body position (compared to the form you should have when in freestyle). I’ve been doing 50/50 (board/no board) the past few weeks. While no board certainly has me more focused on overall rotation and body position I can also see where it takes some focus off of the actual kick, so using a board would seem to help keep the focus on the kick…or am I over-thinking it? Intuitively I would go no board being the best option for kick.
I have tried that (ok maybe not 24 000 yards of kicking but id say around 10 000 for november and 10 000 for december). Still the kick is something that escapes me.
I am an adult onset swimmer and self taught for the most part.
Here are my times. You be the judge
can easily do sets of 1:18 - 1:20 scm with 20 seconds rests
same times with the pull (although RPE feels like 7 instead of 9)
give me some fins and I am about the same time as with a pull buoy maybe one second faster which nobody understands.
I could not kick faster than 2:09 scm even if i was chased by Jaws.
But if someone is willing to criticize my kick and help me get down to 27 min in an HIM swim i will open myself up to ridicule
maybe, my kick is awful. I think I go backwards. I’d take forever to kick that distance. That said, I have been working on ankle flexibility at home at night to work this better
Edit - I don’t mean no swimming. You can keep your 2 x 2000 yards or whatever. But you kick 800 a day, everyday.
How does this differ from a properly designed swim focus? In a normal 4-5k workout, you’re looking at 200 kick in the warm up, 200 kick in the cool down, and something like a 10x50 kick set in the middle (or 3x100 easy kick recovery between swim sets). I did this somewhere to the tune of 200x/year growing up and through high school.
And if people are worried about trashing their legs for a ride/run, they clearly need to heed this advice. They’ll make you winded, but certainly shouldn’t debilitate you.
One of the difficulties of your declaration is to determine who it’s aimed at.
For those who came to Triathlon from swimming, they are usually FOP out of the water and could care less about gaining a minute on a 1500M, if they believed your program could, given that apart from the start and finish kick, most would be reverting to a slow two beat or even no kick in between. Giving up precious training hours on the bike and run in the process.
For those who came to the sport from a running background, their principal problem is usually stroke. They have a poor swim stroke and almost no developed swim muscle. Admittedly they usually have a lousy kick as well. But an argument can be made that while you can have expectations to repeat 50’s in under 50 seconds for a MOP swimmer, kicking even one 50M in under 50 seconds is impossible even for FOP swimmers. A modestly good swimmer can pull below 40 seconds and a good AG swimmer below 30 seconds for a 50M. Maybe Phelps can kick that fast but the rest of us mortals…?
What most late learning swimmers don’t have is any form in the water. They swivel and splash, bob and roll like demented buoys covered in black latex. If they merely learned a smooth stroke with a simple balanced kick they would be far better served. Look at almost any AG swim times and you will see a few who can swim and the rest are several minutes behind. I swim with a Tri Masters group and only those who swam for clubs or college have the slightest idea of form. Some can kick up a storm but it never helps them because it’s tied to a stroke that is inevitably weak and inefficient.
For Elite athletes you are almost certainly right, but for age groups I would argue that the biggest bang for, the hourly training time buck, is a better stroke and a bit of muscle. Of course the muscle bit is another topic altogether.
I have tried that (ok maybe not 24 000 yards of kicking but id say around 10 000 for november and 10 000 for december). Still the kick is something that escapes me.
I am an adult onset swimmer and self taught for the most part.
Here are my times. You be the judge
can easily do sets of 1:18 - 1:20 scm with 20 seconds rests
same times with the pull (although RPE feels like 7 instead of 9)
give me some fins and I am about the same time as with a pull buoy maybe one second faster which nobody understands.
I could not kick faster than 2:09 scm even if i was chased by Jaws.
But if someone is willing to criticize my kick and help me get down to 27 min in an HIM swim i will open myself up to ridicule
Dang that is impressive for an adult onset self-taught swimmer. That converts to ~ 1:11-1:12 100 yard…curious what your HIM splits are now given those interval specs. That’s great swimming all on your own kudos.
