Practice + Pancakes: Louisville Cardinals Crush Monster Kick Set

SwimSwam wants to give you an inside look at what a normal day-in-the-life looks like for any given swimmer, and how that differs from team to team or city to city. We send our head of production, Coleman Hodges, to be a fly on the wall at practice, then relay what he discovered back to you over pancakes. Or at least breakfast.

In Louisville, Kentucky, they have to be finished with school by the end of April. Why is that? The Kentucky Derby took place on Saturday, May 4 this year, and the entire week leading up to it in Louisville is like a big holiday. So when I came to a cardinal practice on Friday April 26, the team was right in the middle of their finals. Rest assured, they were grinding as hard in the pool as they were outside of it.

They started with a drill oriented set, where swimmers were encouraged to take their time and set their strokes up to the best of their abilities. I love watching watching athletes swim drills; you can see the effort and thought being put into the swimming, and you can see how it pays off when the stroke itself looks immaculate.

Next was the kick set. This kick set didn’t have a ton of meters, but everything the swimmers did was fast. and Half of that was with socks. The set was as follows:

3x

50 kick w/ socks FAST

50 kick normal FAST

100 kick w socks FAST

100 kick normal FAST

Round 1 = Flutter kick w/ board

Round 2 = dolphin kick on back

Round 3 = specialty