Kicking is an endlessly fascinating subject. The late, lamented Fitness Swimmer magazine often asked readers which topics they’d like to read about. Each time “kicking” showed up as a favorite topic. Which isn’t surprising: When we take swimming lessons (but not TI Learn to Swim), the first thing the teacher tells you is kick, kick, kick. And the 99% of human swimmers who are unbalanced feel as if they’d sink immediately if they don’t keep churning the legs. But an efficient kick is almost as rare as the desire for it is prevalent. A wide-ranging and thoughtful discussion of the role of kicking and fins in drilling and swimming on the Freestyle Forum at the TI Discussion Board prompted this summary of a really interesting topic.

Topic: Fins and drills

From: Stuart Gray (sgjm@ihug.co.nz)
I have been practicing the drills from the new video, "Fishlike Freestyle" and find that if I wear fins then they are relatively effortless. However when I try to do them without fins, I struggle, become unbalanced, extremely slow and frustrated.

What do people think, should I be continuing to glide fin wise or should I persevere splashing about.

From: Janis Noonan (2zpool@smallbytes.net)
It sounds as if your kicking may be masking balance issues. Do you get forward movement without them? If you do, then drill with no fins for a while. If you don't have forward movement, just try wearing the fins but don't kick.

From: Matt Juric (mjuric@sprintmail.com)
I have NO kick at all. I can't do the drills without fins. Matter of fact without fins I go backwards if I try to kick only. I have seen several posts saying that you need a kick to do the drills but the kick becomes less important and nearly non-existent for distance swimming.

One of the best suggestions I got was to get a pair of fins and gradually cut off an inch or so at a time. I can't vouch for the effectiveness of this plan as I have not tried it yet, however mentally it makes sense.

If you're like me save your time, breath, effort and sanity and keep the fins on. Good Luck

From: Robin Hoare (robinsnest@paradise.net.nz)
I had no kick at all. By dint of wearing fins and as much practice as I could manage I can now do 25 metres on my front, finless and no hands, in a little over a minute. Terribly slow, but at least I'm in forward gear. I would do vertical kicking, but it's not easy when you are 6 feet tall and the pool is 4 ft 6 ins deep.... Many NZ pools don't have a real "deep end". I'm sure it works though!

From Matt Juric
Are you saying that just by wearing fins during your drills your kick got better?
Did you wear them for swimming too?

From Kevin Joubert
I paid attention carefully last time I saw someone kicking and moving backwards, as you say you do.

This is often attributed to tight ankles, but this may miss an important point. What it misses is that some people with this problem have a coordination problem. Where instead of letting the feet relax and act as long flippers like the scuba divers we watched on Jacques Cousteau. They instead exhibit more of a pawing motion. On the kick part they actually bring the feet toward the body by bending the knee. And they also FLEX the ankle on the kick instead of relaxing it. The result is that when they flex the ankle and kick down at the same time, they create a backward force.

This is also described as a bicycle kick, where the common idea of a downbeat and upbeat don't really apply. The swimmer exhibits more of an extension (down pedal) and recovery (up pedal).

Why the lengthy description? Because fins cure this tendency rather well. Fins don't work in bicycle kick mode so the swimmer adapts his motion.

From: Matt Juric
Cool! I definitely have tight ankles. I also know I have the bicycle tendency.

I've been doing all of the drills with the fins. So far I haven't seen a noticeable improvement in my fin less kick.

I have every intention of working on it doing Vertical kicking and the suggestion of slowly shortening a set of fins. Just right now the drills are all I can handle.

Thanks for the input.

From: Robin Hoare
I agree with what you say. I do have tight ankles however and at the moment I am sitting on my computer stool with my legs bent and my toes on the ground under and behind me, "toenails down" so that my feet get stretched.

Kicking, Fins, Drilling and Swimming: Summing Up

By Terry Laughlin

Great discussion. I’ll shed what additional light I can.

Why do I go backward?

As Kevin and Matt noted, inflexible ankles are a common cause. The “adult-onset” swimmer is the classic case. We all lose flexibility as we age (unless you follow a dedicated stretching or yoga program) and if you didn’t start swimming young then you may spend 20 to 40 years gradually losing ankle flexibility. Years of running simply accelerates the stiffening. If you started swimming young, and continued, then that itself is helping maintain your ankle flexibility.

The second cause, as Kevin observed, is simple lack of coordination. The correct flutter kicking action is counter-intuitive. Your other kicking experiences (footballs, soccer balls, tires) teach you to kick with about 90 degrees of knee flexion. But an efficient flutter kick wants only about 30 degrees; the kick happens mostly from the hip flexor and quadriceps. Kids learn it fairly spontaneously; the adult-onset swimmer often has to consciously unlearn the other kicking habits in order to learn the right way.

How do I fix it?

Most of the best corrections were mentioned above. I’ll summarize and comment on them one-by-one.

Vertical kicking – This won’t do much for flexibility but it is effective for learning the coordination. If you kick with a running action, you’ll simply sink. Being able to breathe air is a strong motivator to do it right. You can make it a bit easier if you tuck a pull buoy under each armpit, or hug a kickboard to your chest – finally a productive use for those two pieces of equipment! Focus on keeping a long line from hip to toes as you kick. Your leg should be long and supple, never rigid. A good exercise for the true beginner is simply to sit on the edge of the pool with as much of your legs as possible dangling in the water and try to move the water solidly back and forth with an almost-straight leg. Slight knee flexion and try to use ankle flexion and extension to move the water forward and back. Try “stirring” the water with one foot to develop a bit more awareness of how to feel the water with your feet.

Side kicking – This can help you with both coordination and flexibility and is one more benefit to practicing TI drills. Each Long Axis drill (i.e. those involving flutter kick) start and finish with time spent in your Sweet Spot. Any time you’re kicking on your side, you’re a lot more likely to use the 30-degree flexion kick. Kicking on your stomach – with or without kickboard – makes if far more likely that you’ll do the bicycling kick, because gravity encourages it. On your side, because your knees don’t flex in the direction gravity is working, you’re far less likely to “bicycle.”

Stretching – Won’t do anything for coordination. It may improve the range of motion in your ankles moderately. It won’t suddenly turn you into a fast, easy kicker.

What about fins?

The primary benefit of fins is that the blade will flex easily, compensating for the ankle that won’t. In order for the kick to be propulsive, something has to flex, in order to move the water, similar to the screw-action of the pitched blades of a propellor. When your ankle refuses, it’s only natural for your knee to substitute. That only makes the problem worse. First because a right-angle knee causes your lower leg to protrude from your slipstream – turning the leg into another source of drag. That’s why you don’t move forward. Second it triggers the pawing action Kevin described. That causes you to go backward. With fins on your feet – and your body on its side –- pretty soon you’re helping both flexibility and coordination.

Kicking and fins in drills?

That Sweet Spot pause in every TI Long Axis drill helps your flexibility and coordination. Good. But if you have a poor kick, each time you return to Sweet Spot, your body may stop moving. Bad. If your body comes to halt after each cycle, you end up lurching down the pool, spending most of your energy trying to overcome inertia, rather than efficiently conserving momentum. So a reasonable kick is essential to efficient drill practice. And because the main point of drills are to teach you ease and economy, it really is an enormous benefit if using fins allows you to practice ease as you drill. But we do recommend that you try to complete Lesson One in the Fishlike Freestyle sequence without fins. That helps to ensure that you’re using the fins mainly to help conserve momentum, not to mask your balance problem. And if you do use fins while wearing drills, let them do the work. Keep your legs long and supple and relaxed. Kick as gently as possible, so the fins don’t overwhelm the core-generated movement you’re trying to learn.

And don’t entirely avoid practicing drills without fins. Particularly as you move past the static drills (Lessons One and Two plus UnderSkate and ZipperSkate), it’s good to patiently work at learning to drill with reasonable ease without fins. When doing Switch drills, it should not be impossible to eventually learn to do short repeats, using the momentum generated by your core-body rotation instead of that supplied by fins. Your transition to swimming should benefit greatly by this.

Kicking and fins while swimming?

Unless you’re a sprinter, we advocate a non-overt kick – i.e. one you’re hardly aware of. If your drills teach you balance, it should be much easier to just let your legs follow your core-body. I don’t encourage swimmers to use fins very often while swimming. It tends to encourage you to overkick and you can easily lose your feel for balance, fluency, and for swimming with a seamless whole-body harmony. So…do use fins if they contribute dramatically to your ease while drilling. Don’t be too reluctant to try some drilling without them. And take the fins off when you start swimming.

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