Post a pic of your foot showcasing your ankle flexion along with your representative long distance swim pace/100m or the amount of time it takes you to freekick 25m or 25yards.
I’m convinced there is a correlation among MOP swimmers and genetic lack of ankle flexion (among many other factors) and many triathletes (beginner and experienced) don’t realize this. Lack of ankle flexion capability makes my feet big drags in the water and prevent forward kick propulsion. Even though a strong kick isn’t paramount for Triathletes having feet that aren’t drags surely improves swim performance and energy expenditure. I’m guessing my feet/ankle fexion hamper my distance swim pace by 20sec/100m vs. a fast distance swimmer (1:30/100m pace) and but I can’t prove it…
My intention of this post is to raise awareness of an issue (poor ankle flexion) that my be holding many MOP distance swimming triathletes up causing frustration with their lack of progress and speed.
Don’t get too caught up in my estimate of 20sec/100m distance impact. Weather it is 10 sec or 20 sec isn’t as important to these folks as understanding that genetics are making progress very difficult vs. someone with ideal ankle flexion.
My 20sec/100m impact (for distance swimming) estimate is based on a slow swimmer significantly above 2:00min/100m for a 1 mile pace and brakes down as follows:
+5 sec of direct drag caused by frontal area of feet
+5 sec impact from droopy legs (exacerbated by said feet among many other factors)
+5 to +10 seconds of fatigue caused by the above issues
Total = up to 20 second impact/100 meters caused by a genetic limitation many aren’t aware of
Help me determine if my theory holds “water”!!!
My stats and pic: (I stretch my ankles by sitting on them daily for 5minutes for 3+ years with minimal improvement)
- 8.5" to top of toes (Size 12 Foot pointed as hard as I can)
- 1:53/100m race pace (2015 Muncie 70.3 36:29 total time for 1.2 miles with wetsuit)
- 60+ seconds 25m freekick across the pool to exhaustion
My Wife’s foot (3" to top of toes) serves as an example of stellar ankle flexion (no drag in the water with those toes!!!)
No, it doesn’t make 20 secs per 100 difference. A little bit, but not that much.
There are a few guys who can’t kick at masters, and have similar toe pointing abilities to yours. One of them (he’s 30, and really a sprinter more than anything else) is about 5:00 for his 400m free. Oh, he’s an adult onset swimmer, been swimming for about 5 years, no previous background.
On kick sets I lap him every 150 or so.
No, it doesn’t make 20 secs per 100 difference. A little bit, but not that much.
There are a few guys who can’t kick at masters, and have similar toe pointing abilities to yours. One of them (he’s 30, and really a sprinter more than anything else) is about 5:00 for his 400m free. Oh, he’s an adult onset swimmer, been swimming for about 5 years, no previous background.
On kick sets I lap him every 150 or so.
Good input, but I need to clarify I’m talking long distance swim pace - even I can muscle thru a 400m fairly quick with zero ankle flexion but after that exhaustion will take its toll - I’m talking triathlon swim pace > than half a mile sustainable swim pace. There’s always exceptions out there, but I suspect a lot of 2:00+/100m pace triathlon swimmers have really poor ankle flexion like me?
Now show me your feet and long distance stats!
No, it doesn’t make 20 secs per 100 difference. A little bit, but not that much.
There are a few guys who can’t kick at masters, and have similar toe pointing abilities to yours. One of them (he’s 30, and really a sprinter more than anything else) is about 5:00 for his 400m free. Oh, he’s an adult onset swimmer, been swimming for about 5 years, no previous background.
On kick sets I lap him every 150 or so.
Good input, but I need to clarify I’m talking long distance swim pace - even I can muscle thru a 400m fairly quick with zero ankle flexion but after that exhaustion will take its toll - I’m talking triathlon swim pace > than half a mile sustainable swim pace. There’s always exceptions out there, but I suspect a lot of 2:00+/100m pace triathlon swimmers have really poor ankle flexion like me?
Yes, but there are lots of moderately fast to really fast guys with poor ankle flexion too. I know some of them. It isn’t the tiny bit of drag from your ankles slowing you down.
[quote JasoninHalifax
Yes, but there are lots of moderately fast to really fast guys with poor ankle flexion too. I know some of them. It isn’t the tiny bit of drag from your ankles slowing you down.
Put on your scientific swim cap and look at the amount of vertical plane my feet present to the water- combined feet is about 7" wide by 4" tall or about the dimensions of a brick. A brick of drag isn’t tiny in my book.
Now show me your feet and stats 
Post a pic of your foot showcasing your ankle flexion along with your representative long distance swim pace/100m or the amount of time it takes you to freekick 25m or 25yards.
I’m convinced there is a correlation among MOP swimmers and genetic lack of ankle flexion (among many other factors) and many triathletes (beginner and experienced) don’t realize this. Lack of ankle flexion capability makes my feet big drags in the water and prevent forward kick propulsion. Even though a strong kick isn’t paramount for Triathletes having feet that aren’t drags surely improves swim performance and energy expenditure. I’m guessing my feet/ankle fexion hamper my distance swim pace by 20sec/100m vs. a fast distance swimmer (1:30/100m pace) and but I can’t prove it…
Help me determine if my theory holds “water”!!!
My stats and pic: (I stretch my ankles by sitting on them daily for 5minutes for 3+ years with minimal improvement)
- 8.5" to top of toes (Size 12 Foot pointed as hard as I can)
- 1:53/100m race pace (2015 Muncie 70.3 36:29 total time for 1.2 miles with wetsuit)
- 60+ seconds 25m freekick across the pool to exhaustion
My Wife’s foot (3" to top of toes) serves as an example of stellar ankle flexion (no drag in the water with those toes!!!)
GTO - I don’t have a working camera right now but my ankle extension is very, very similar to yours, and i’m NOWHERE close to your wife’s extension. I mostly do oly dist races and typically swim 20-22 min depending on the actual length of the course, i.e., some alleged “1500 m” have been as fast as 14:00 (short and/or with the current) and some as slow as 30:00 (long and/or against current). In the pool, my best 500/1000/1650 yd are 5:57, 12:20, and 20:40, but my best 25 yd kick is about 24 sec and 100 yd kick would be at best 1:59. In the U.S. Masters 1 hour swim contest, I’ve gone 4450 yd in the 60 minutes.
Also, if you can swim a reasonably quick 400 scm, then you can swim a quick 1500 m, 1900 m, and 3800 m. The 400 m mark is where we get into “distance swimming”, just as the 1500 m/mile in running is the lower edge of distance running.
You don’t want to see my feet. But anyway, I can point my toes so the tops of my feet are below my shins, ie >180* I can also kick 50m SCM in about 35 secs with a board, about the same on my back with no board. Underwater is quicker, but I can’t go 50m like that anymore. But that’s not really the point.
I also wear a gigantic drag suit every day in practice. It’s 2 sizes too big, I can almost guarantee that it creates more drag than your feet. It doesn’t slow me down anywhere close to 20 secs per 100. Seriously, that’s an eternity, that’s the difference between a flat out 100 free and my 1500 pace.
[quote ericmulk
GTO - I don’t have a working camera right now but my ankle extension is very, very similar to yours, and i’m NOWHERE close to your wife’s extension. I mostly do oly dist races and typically swim 20-22 min depending on the actual length of the course, i.e., some alleged “1500 m” have been as fast as 14:00 (short and/or with the current) and some as slow as 30:00 (long and/or against current). In the pool, my best 500/1000/1650 yd are 5:57, 12:20, and 20:40, but my best 25 yd kick is about 24 sec and 100 yd kick would be at best 1:59. In the U.S. Masters 1 hour swim contest, I’ve gone 4450 yd in the 60 minutes.
Also, if you can swim a reasonably quick 400 scm, then you can swim a quick 1500 m, 1900 m, and 3800 m. The 400 m mark is where we get into “distance swimming”, just as the 1500 m/mile in running is the lower edge of distance running.
Get that camera fixed! A picture is worth a thousand words… I could reduce my feet’s frontal exposure (drag) by half it I could reduce from 8.5" in my pic to say 6" and to nearly zero at say 4". Now get a working camera and post a pic! (see the theme here)
Keep in mind that your entire foot is not creating drag against the water. If you are lifting your femur up at the hip so it is up and behind your hips (rather than legs dragging) and with a slight flex in the knee suddenly your feet are parallel to the water surface even with not great ankle flex.
Plus that’s all pretty turbulent back there.
In any case, that’s not what is keeping the op away from the front of the pack, especially in triathlon swimming.
Keep in mind that your entire foot is not creating drag against the water. If you are lifting your femur up at the hip so it is up and behind your hips (rather than legs dragging) and with a slight flex in the knee suddenly your feet are parallel to the water surface even with not great ankle flex.
Agreed and Jason’s estimation is spot on as well. The tops of the feet like fins, shoot into the frontal area in the downkick, but after that they should tuck back into the shadow or wake of the torso.
When my legs drop I feel drag on my knee caps not my feet tops. My legs & ankles do look very inflexible in underwater video. ankles are at the 7" range sz 14. I can kick 25s in 30s.
Kicking performance comes from the lower abdominal & back muscles, hip flexors etc. Lot of work to get there.
As for AOS - my son is a 5 min 400M swimmer, has ~ 3 years into the sport and is 11 years old Yes it helps to be made of rubber. I am still recovering from the workouts he does 3x a week.
At 30s is a frontal shots you can see where the feet drop in. If this swimmer had droopy legs that would a different story.
https://youtu.be/-Wei4DGNYJM?t=31s
Oh, you wanted to know my long distance swim speed as well. Longest swim I’ve done in the last 5 years is an 800 free SCM, 9:34. That’s averaging a bit under 1:12’s. The SCY equivalent would be holding 1:05’s for the 1000.
But my stats aren’t all that relevant, because I’m probably not the guy you want to emulate.
No, it doesn’t make 20 secs per 100 difference. A little bit, but not that much.
There are a few guys who can’t kick at masters, and have similar toe pointing abilities to yours. One of them (he’s 30, and really a sprinter more than anything else) is about 5:00 for his 400m free. Oh, he’s an adult onset swimmer, been swimming for about 5 years, no previous background.
On kick sets I lap him every 150 or so.
If they can’t kick at Masters and you lap them every 150, then how long does it take them to kick 50’s? They can’t be stalling out or moving backwards or taking 1:58 to travel 25 yards are they?
Keep in mind that your entire foot is not creating drag against the water. If you are lifting your femur up at the hip so it is up and behind your hips (rather than legs dragging) and with a slight flex in the knee suddenly your feet are parallel to the water surface even with not great ankle flex.
Agreed, but unfortunately it would require much more than slight knee bend while kicking from the hips to get my feet parallel to the water. It takes and exaggerated hip flex just to get them to water surface!
For the benefit of this post, I will elaborate on my theory…
My intention of this post is to raise awareness of an issue (poor ankle flexion) that my be holding many MOP distance swimming triathletes up causing frustration with their lack of progress and speed.
Don’t get too caught up in my estimate of 20sec/100m distance impact. Weather it is 10 sec or 20 sec isn’t as important to these folks as understanding that genetics are making progress very difficult vs. someone with ideal ankle flexion.
My 20sec/100m impact (for distance swimming) estimate is based on a slow swimmer significantly above 2:00min/100m for a 1 mile pace and brakes down as follows:
+5 sec of direct drag caused by frontal area of feet
+5 sec impact from droopy legs (exacerbated by said feet among many other factors)
+5 to +10 seconds of fatigue caused by the above issues
Total = up to 20 second impact/100 meters caused by a genetic limitation many aren’t aware of
(I’ve added the above to my original posting to help clarify this post)
My feet are nasty from sockless mountain running, but I can touch my toes to the ground in that position (with legs flat on the floor. i also have short feet.).
Currently I can hold 1:09/100y for something like a 30 minute swim for time. I can sprint kick a 25y in about 17-18 seconds (yay weights and other sports for helping out m’legs).
I’m 25, been swimming for nigh 20 years.
A lot of other good things being said by others here, but I thought I’d just give you the answer and let you draw conclusions, all though I don’t think it really works like that (see Jason’s first comment). Also, I’ve seen more than a few studies that actually indicate that the more ankle flexibility you have, the slower you run. When I “lock” my ankle while running, I tend to run faster (but it’s harder work and more thinking).
Just my $.02
I also wear a gigantic drag suit every day in practice. It’s 2 sizes too big, I can almost guarantee that it creates more drag than your feet. It doesn’t slow me down anywhere close to 20 secs per 100. Seriously, that’s an eternity, that’s the difference between a flat out 100 free and my 1500 pace.
Your drag suit makes me think of an extreme experiment to better appreciate the lack of ankle flexion. If a very good swimmer tried to swim a mile with ski boots on his feet (pretend the boots were not wider than no boots at all and simply locked the ankles) how much slower would the swimmer be? My guess is very much slower… Obviously this is an extreme example to emphasize a point and reality lies somewhere between perfect ankle flexion (flipper feet) and my ankles, but I could easily see this adding up to 10-20sec/100m over a mile swim…
My feet are nasty from sockless mountain running, but I can touch my toes to the ground in that position (with legs flat on the floor. i also have short feet.).
Currently I can hold 1:09/100y for something like a 30 minute swim for time. I can sprint kick a 25y in about 17-18 seconds (yay weights and other sports for helping out m’legs).
I’m 25, been swimming for nigh 20 years.
A lot of other good things being said by others here, but I thought I’d just give you the answer and let you draw conclusions, all though I don’t think it really works like that (see Jason’s first comment). Also, I’ve seen more than a few studies that actually indicate that the more ankle flexibility you have, the slower you run. When I “lock” my ankle while running, I tend to run faster (but it’s harder work and more thinking).
Just my $.02
I hear ya! When in shape I generally finish in the top 10% in rugged trail marathons and I suspect my ankles are helping me run faster and with lower potential for injury (twist and sprains). Also when in shape I’ll finish in the top 20% in IM 70.3 triathlons, I’m a decent cyclist and runner, but only slightly above the bell curve in the water which I attribute partially to my ankles. I could spend 7 hours of effort in the pool each week to partially offset my swimmer ankle condition (but all things being equal my ankles will always make me slower at the same effort as someone with perfect ankle flexion) and maybe make a 10sec/100m pace improvement in my 1.2 mile swim pace or I can minimize my pool time to being able to swim comfortably at 1:50 to 2:00/100m and focus on the bike and run. It’s all tradeoffs!!!
No, it doesn’t make 20 secs per 100 difference. A little bit, but not that much.
There are a few guys who can’t kick at masters, and have similar toe pointing abilities to yours. One of them (he’s 30, and really a sprinter more than anything else) is about 5:00 for his 400m free. Oh, he’s an adult onset swimmer, been swimming for about 5 years, no previous background.
On kick sets I lap him every 150 or so.
If they can’t kick at Masters and you lap them every 150, then how long does it take them to kick 50’s? They can’t be stalling out or moving backwards or taking 1:58 to travel 25 yards are they?
He wears fins for kick sets. I don’t.
I also wear a gigantic drag suit every day in practice. It’s 2 sizes too big, I can almost guarantee that it creates more drag than your feet. It doesn’t slow me down anywhere close to 20 secs per 100. Seriously, that’s an eternity, that’s the difference between a flat out 100 free and my 1500 pace.
Your drag suit makes me think of an extreme experiment to better appreciate the lack of ankle flexion. If a very good swimmer tried to swim a mile with ski boots on his feet (pretend the boots were not wider than no boots at all and simply locked the ankles) how much slower would the swimmer be? My guess is very much slower… Obviously this is an extreme example to emphasize a point and reality lies somewhere between perfect ankle flexion (flipper feet) and my ankles, but I could easily see this adding up to 10-20sec/100m over a mile swim…
I believe at the 90 degree extreme you are correct. I had an elitish 60+ runner who literally was locked in close to 90. When he kicked you actually “grabbed water” hooked the water and pulled his body BACKWARDS.
But for most humans at 30-45 degrees, your feet get into the shadow of the hip and knee and if you do that, your tibia is already pointing a bit upwards towards the water surface so the 30 degree flex looks more like 15 and it is all behind the leg in turbulent water.
What I have noticed for myself, that I have to “not flip into a doriflex” when I push down on the water with my tibia. I have this habit of relaxing the plantar flex and the ankle goes into dorsi and creates drag at the end of the 'down stroke" when the tibia is pointing a bit down. I need to keep my toes pointing generally to the back of the pool and not the bottom (even for a moment…then it is like putting down the drag chute). This problem has nothing to do with ankle flex, but more with bad technique and inattention. I keep working on that during kick sets, but when I am swimming freestyle I keep catching the dorsi action. It is hard to break so many years of doing it badly.
Jason, should I just do a bunch of freestyle with fins. Also I have noted doing band pull, just keeping the plantarflex position really makes a diff rather than getting lazy and going into dorsiflex.
Not sure exactly what you mean. It’s hard to figure this stuff out over the internet without seeing it, but when you say “dorsiflexed” does that mean back to like 90 degrees? Or just less pointed?
Good kickers don’t actually actively point their toes in swimming (at least I don’t), the ankles are just loose and the water pressure moves the foot to a pointed or less pointed position.
as far as the foot creating drag when it starts the upkick, I’m not sure that’s true. on the upkick, it’s the bottom of the foot that is essentially “sculling” water backwards, so there is a positive pressure on the bottom of the foot, and reduced pressure on the top if the foot.
The biggest thing you can do, and some people can never do it, some can, is learn to let your ankles relax so they can just flop loosely. I have no idea how to teach that.
As for the OP, he has more than sufficient ankle flexibility to kick faster than 60s per 25. There’s other things he’s doing wrong.