This bad boy originally appeared over at YourSwimBook.com. You can join Olivier’s weekly motivational newsletter for competitive swimmers by clicking here.
I have been on a kicking tangent over the past few weeks or so, all thanks to YourSwimBook newsletter reader Matty R. who asked a simple question that sent me down the rabbit hole of kick—“how do I improve my flutter kick?”
Outside of posting some of my own favorite kick sets, and posting a series of submitted kick sets from Canadian 2012 National Coach of the Year, Sean Baker, and writing up a hilariously thorough guide to improving your underwater dolphin kick, I have also been playing around with new kick sets on my way to working towards a :30 sec 50m kick.
Whether it is doing vertical kick, incorporating fins, doing single leg kicking, or using my kickboard like a snowplow, there are a heap of different ways to strengthen up your legs and hips.
A Strong Kick = Faster Swimming
The point of doing all the leg-specific work isn’t solely to develop a strong kick for the benefit of having a strong kick; but to improve your overall swimming speed.
Improving your kick should fit in the overall plan to becoming a faster swimmer.
For many swimmers the legs are just two pieces of driftwood that trail their over-worked upper body and arms, and whether it is because they feel they are forever destined to have a mediocre kick, or whether they avoid it because they don’t like not being good at something, these swimmers are missing out on a powerful range of benefits that a good kick provides.
1. A strong kick gives you better body positioning (a.k.a. less drag).
When your kick slows, all too often our hips drop, leaving our shoulders to take the full brunt of the workload with the added drag of your legs and feet angling towards the bottom of the pool.
Fast swimmers recognize that a consistent, powerful kick keeps their body flat along the surface of the water, while also minimizing the additional drag that can be crushing to a swimmer’s propulsion.
This is especially in the case of sprint freestylers, who aim to skip and hydroplane across the top of the water. Having a devastating kick is necessary to keep the shoulders up out of the water and attacking and rolling forward.
2. A strong kick provides propulsion.
One reason swimmers avoid doing kick-centric work is that the propulsion that comes from kicking isn’t as intuitive as the results you get from pulling.
When you try to pull harder you can see and feel the effects quite literally in front of your face. With kicking on the other hand the increase in velocity isn’t quite as noticeable as all the action is happening behind you.
But the reality is plain as day:
You look at any elite swimmer, they have absolute powerhouse legs.
Michael Phelps could box squat 300 pounds for 20 reps. Ryan Lochte can underwater dolphin kick a long 50m in 23.49 seconds. Alexander Popov, probably the greatest sprint freestyler in history, could kick 50m with a kickboard in 27 seconds. Long course.
3. A strong kick keeps your stroke together.
You know the feeling well, whether it happened in a race, or more frequently in practice:
You’ll be blasting along, and inevitably you feel the effects of the effort, with your legs slowing from a 6-beat motor to a 2 beat stutter kick.
Perhaps what is most noticeable is how quickly your stroke falls apart at this stage.
Your entry gets sloppy, your hands start to slip during the catch and pull, and your legs feel like they are suddenly kicking through air. As your stroke falls apart, forward propulsion plummets.
Having very fit and strong legs can help delay this inevitable collapse, and help you keep your stroke together long enough to power you to the wall with speed.
What will you do to incorporate focused kick work at practice today?
Ready to Take Your Swimming to the Next Level?
YourSwimBook is a log book and goal setting guide designed specifically for competitive swimmers. It includes a ten month log book, comprehensive goal setting section, monthly evaluations to be filled out with your coach, and more.
Learn 8 more reasons why this tool kicks butt now.
Join the YourSwimBook weekly newsletter group and get motivational tips and more straight to your inbox. Sign up for free here.
Any suggestions of kick sets for kids ages 7 to 10 who are either new to swim team or still learning basic skills? We’re working on body position (especially in backstroke) and keeping a steady kick (and avoiding scissors kick) in freestyle. Any suggestions of ways to integrate games/fun into kick sets? Also, any thoughts on kicking with boards vs. kicking without boards at this age? Thanks!
For Sr. Group. 400 k for time ave. per 100. on (ex. 30 Ri and Heart rate) + 50 drill on 1:00
2x 200 on 1/2 your 400 time plus 15 Ri + 50 drill on 1:00 goal faster per 100 then 400
4 x 100 on 1/2 your 200 time plus 10 Ri. + 50 drill after 4 x 100. Faster than 1/2 your 200’s
8 x 50 on 1/2 your 100 time plus 10 RI per interval. + 50 drill if doing 25’s
So 5:20 for 400 ave. per100 is 1:20, go 200’s on 2:55 100 on 1:30, 50 on :55 or :50
Prefer to do both dolphin back ( 1 arm stroke… Read more »
Great article. My understanding is that the kick also provides stabilization, enabling the upper body to more fully engage the core. Similarly, in baseball, a batter’s power comes, not just through the arms or legs, but primarily as the legs and core are engaged, leveraging the earth’s force. Your kick is the stabilizing force that provides force for your core and upper body.
Agree, but it’s rather challenging to create good sets of kick-work to incorporate in practice.
Got any tips, or examples of effective kick drills? And much time a week should you spend on kicking? Thanx
Go to the old Floswimming website and look up the Sean Hutchison kick drills from King Aquatics. He gives some really good explanations of proper kicking technique and what to look for.
As far as training, I personally believe in kicking every day to an extent, particularly early in the season. You can really push aerobic capacity with leg work early in the training cycle without risking injury to the shoulders. Once we start up with our AM practices, we actually do nothing but kick on Wednesday mornings. Here are a couple of quick ideas kicking sets.
1. This is a set I got from seeing a video of Richard Quick at Auburn… we do it with Zoomers
4… Read more »
Thanks so much! I will definitely give your proposal a try, and the floswimming website is a very helpful source – thanks for pointing that one out to me!
20 x 25 sprint kick @ 1:00
Thanks, totally agree!