SWIM - KICKING BAD HABITS
If you have trouble with your kick when you swim it's likely you've adopted a defensive position in the water which impairs your kick mechanics. To overcome this you'll be using your strength to over come it, kicking with force in the hope it will propel you forward. Unlike running where if you take a step you go forward, in the water it's possible to kick and go nowhere or even backwards. If you use loads of energy to kick and don't move much then there is a lot of wasted energy going on and plenty of drag being created. The impact this has is that you are using more energy when you swim and also making it harder due to more drag.
Part of the problem with improving your kick is the methods you use to do it. Firstly most of us watch elite swimmers on television and observe these faster swimmers with powerful kicks. While this is true commonly we only watch the sprint swimmers so we are adopting the mentality that kicking harder and faster is the key to fast swimming. Few of us have sat down and watched a 10km swim race to see just how little these guys kick in comparison. In fact the elite swimmers possibly only add an extra 2-3% of performance through kicking heavily which probably increases effort by about 20-30% - the return on this effort is poor for an endurance or even non competitive swimmer at an elite level.
We’d all do better to learn how to kick so that we counterbalance our stroke and maintain streamline and balance such that we maximise the benefits from our other movements. In summary the kick is important to fast and slow swimmers and first we should learnt to kick without compromising our stroke before we kick for fitness or speed.
You can overcome poor kicking with four steps:
1. Kick less and use swim aids to challenge and teach balance
2. Practice dry land exercises to teach a correct movement pattern
3. Kick to displace water not to make splash and create extra drag
4. Kick for counter balance not for propulsion
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