Ramp Up Your Freestyle Kick The Race Club Way – Swim Training

Courtesy of Gary Hall Sr., 10-time World Record Holder, 3-time Olympian, 1976 Olympic Games US Flagbearer and The Race Club co-founder.

The propulsive power that one derives from the freestyle kick depends on pushing a large surface area backward in the water quickly. The backward movement of the kick occurs in the down kick and depends on the strong muscles of the quadriceps and the hip flexors to drive the foot back with speed, along with the core muscles. The fastest kickers in the world have developed these specific muscles into very powerful ones in order to achieve this goal.

Maximal Power

To build maximal power in the kicking motions, some of the muscle development will come from doing lots of kicking in the pool. The rest must come from doing dry land or strength training, where the resistance to motion can become much greater than that produced by the water.

Leg Extensions In The Gym

One of my favorite exercises for the down kick is leg extensions in the gym. Enough weight should be placed on the machine while in the sitting position to make 50 reps manageable, yet the last 10 reps need to feel as if the legs will fall off at any moment. The muscles must scream with pain. Doing 3 sets of those, while allowing only about 30 degrees of knee bend, will simulate the motion of the down kick. Remember that in the water, too much knee bend results in too much frontal drag.

Dry Land Kicking

To work the hip flexors and core, at The Race Club we do lots of dry land kicking. My favorite is 3 sets of one-minute flutter kicks on shoulders (vertically), elbows (horizontally) and what I call flick kicks, which are extremely fast-motion kicks with the ankles loose and a modest amount of knee bend. The last ones are the most difficult. We repeat these three-minute exercises three times, the last two using 3-5 lb ankle weights secured with Velcro straps.

Developing the Up Kick

To develop the up kick, we use the leg flexion machine lying face down, but instead of bending the knees, we recommend lifting the legs straight, using lower back, hamstring and calf muscles. Since the muscles used in this motion are not as strong as the quads, 30 reps are recommended. The straight leg motion is closer to the actual up kick motion in the water. On dry land, we recommend alternating leg and arm lifts from the prone position, keeping both arms and legs off the ground for one minute.

Traditional leg squats and leg presses are a good way to help your starts and turns, but don’t do much to help the actual kicking motion.

VASA / Erg – The Race Club Way 

Finally, working in collaboration with VASA, the swim bench company, The Race Club has made some modifications to their Ergometer model to be able to develop kicking strength using shock cords. The motions on the new bench are very similar to the kicking motions in the water and the tension on the cords can be varied to the desired resistance. We build them on demand.

You can find some of these recommended exercises on the following Race Club swimisode: http://www.theraceclub.com/videos/swimming-drills-secret-tip-legs-inertia/

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Gary Hall, Sr., Technical Director and Head Coach of The Race Club (courtesy of TRC)

Yours in Swimming,

Gary Sr.

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