Some thoughts about kicking that I’ve discovered:

1. There are those who can kick to propel themselves at speed, and those who cannot.

2. There are many reasons why someone cannot propel themselves at speed, some physical, some neurological.

3. The younger you are, the more likely you can develop the correct physical and neurological attributes to enable kicking for speed. Entering swimming when you are older means you will most likely have a harder time developing attributes for speed generation via kicking.

4. Some theorize that bigger feet can propel you faster. I’m not sure this has been conclusively proven that big feet always make you fast via kicking since there are other elements involved besides big feet, but there are definite advantages to being able to have more surface area for moving water.

5. In my experience, poor balance will result in negating any kicking advantage you might obtain. If you’re even gonna have a chance at speed via kicking, you better have your act together in balance. This goes for flutter kicking in SG, or Skate. It also applies to kicking with a board. If you are dragging your body in the water behind the kickboard, you’re gonna have a hard time obtaining speed while kicking behind it.

6. Thus, one bad aspect of kicking with a board is that in order to get your body up, you’re most likely going to have to overextend your back and arch to get your hips and legs up horizontal. This can be VERY bad for your back. To combat this, you could keep your head down in the water but then you have to tip your head up or to the side to take the occasional breath.

7. There is a risk that if you imprint overextending on the kickboard, it can ruin your posture for regular swimming. The majority of the population in today’s society already exhibits overextended backs (ie. “sway”). I do not think it’s a good idea to reinforce already a bad postural aspect.

8. Some physical and neurological attributes:

a. Ankle flexibility seems to be a major element. You must also be able to point your feet and toes and keep them pointed without straining other muscles while swimming (ie. no calf cramps!).
b. Proper movement pattern for kicking, very unlike any other kind of movement pattern on land.
c. Proper mobility and strength in the lower body, from hips to feet.
d. Ability to move legs rapidly enough in that movement pattern from a physical conditioning standpoint. Moving your legs so much requires more oxygen and energy and thus there is some fitness you will have to develop in order to kick for a long time.
e. Timing some of the kicks to the arm stroke to generate power spearing forward. If 2BK, then all of the kicks, 1 each stroke, is timed to the spear.

9. If you are kick challenged, then don’t waste time developing your kick like someone who has been swimming since they were a kid or someone who has mastered the 6BK. Go to the 2BK immediately.

9a. If you are finding that kicking isn’t moving you forward all that fast, then also don’t bother. You will probably find that kicking will use up resources faster than you want, versus getting you more speed.

10. You should also ask yourself why would you want to kick in Freestyle swimming. If you are trying to be the fastest for short course racing, then it may be worthwhile. If you are a triathlete and need to save the legs for the bike and run, then kicking might not be desirable.

11. If you are kick challenged, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t develop a kick. Like it or not, kicking is a valid swimming skill and if someone wants to learn, then by all means go for it.

I was kick challenged but then over the years of working in TI, i could actually start moving myself across the pool with kicking! The things I had to adjust for myself were:

a. If I kicked in Skate, I had to spear much deeper, like 30-40 deg than for regular swimming. This would ensure I had my hips really high and a great horizontal position in the water.

b. I had to metabolically prepare for constant and fast movement of my legs, and at a rate that was higher than I was accustomed to. This rate was much higher than for running. And I had to maintain it while I could not get constant air due to being face down longer than I would for a land activity.

c. I learned that kicking on my back was different than kicking on my stomach. If you kick on your back, you need to also exert kicking force to the back of the leg in addition to kicking forward. This helps bring your hips up. Also, this aspect applies to kicking in Backstroke – the first time I was drilling Backstroke, I could not even move! But then Coach Shinji told me I needed more down kick, or when on my back I needed to kick to the rear of my legs versus only to the front, and that fixed everything.

So it can be trained, and there are ways to train for 6BK that are optimized. The later in life you start swimming, the more time you’re going to spend developing the basic attributes for kicking. I do think it is possible at any age to do so. It’s just that most people are too impatient to work at it and arguably you can swim pretty fast without kicking so much.

CoachDShen is a Total Immersion coach based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more posts at his training blog.

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At a detail level, those 3 levels of progression are really areas of emphasis during our training and in drills we give to our students. In reality, you are touching upon all 3 concepts in every drill, but just to varying degrees of focus as we want to emphasize some particular concept at each level.

One thing I hear when I talk to people about TI and see also in forum posts around the internet, is that people think TI just stops there and our swimmers never get fast. And swimmers often get confused by our materials or if they do not continue coaching from a TI coach that they reach a certain point in their swimming and they don’t advance any further. Often I hear TI is at fault, or is missing something, or isn’t for competitive swimmers. This is far from the truth.

As a level beyond Balance/Streamline/Propulsion, I like to talk about Optimization, which is what you do when you master Balance, Streamline, and Propulsion. But what is Optimization?

Optimization is:

1. Further mastery of Balance, Streamline, and Propulsion in coordination, time, effort, speed, etc.

Drills don’t end with what is shown in our DVDs, or with your workshop, or with your first few sessions with a coach. We teach with more advanced progressions to fine tune your swimming, and also with focal points which are individualized to your own issues. Teaching the use of tools like the tempo trainer and tracking can help bring consistency and accurate, actionable information to your training, versus training in a data vacuum from workout to endless workout. The next level is to take your newfound skills across time, and to train you to hold form with faster tempos and for longer periods of time, and to increase your capacity to generate velocity while not wrecking your streamline and balance.

2. Application of Balance, Streamline, and Propulsion in more situations like racing, or in open water.

TI coaches have a wide variety of experiences ranging from short/long course racing to triathlon to open water racing to crossing the English channel. We apply TI techniques to make swimming in those situations more effective.

3. Pursuit of a higher goal than just mastery of swimming itself. This can be something like comfort in the water or obtaining their PR in the swim leg of Ironman. Or it can be using swimming as a means of improving mental focus and growth.

Following on 2., many TI coaches can advise and coach you to your particular goals which go beyond skill-based mastery of swimming. Swimming, like any physical activity, has benefits which can translate to activities outside swimming. Many TI coaches can help you realize the connection between the two, and perhaps even strengthen that connection.

It is an unfortunate fact that many people perceive that TI ends with Balance, Streamline, and Propulsion, or has little or nothing to offer beyond the teachings of the DVDs. Optimization of swimming is something that every TI coach I’ve encountered knows well, especially in the areas of their expertise. My hope is that over time, Total Immersion is more well known as a full system of learning and mastering swimming and for improving aspects of your life beyond the pool.

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We start with balance in the water, but if you cannot get truly horizontal in the water, then balance is hard to achieve. Most of my clients are Silicon Valley professionals – hence, a desk job at a computer for years, if not decades, with their upper (thoracic) spine and neck both dropping down, and their shoulders pulling inwards towards their chests as they look down on monitors and type on keyboards. When your posture is like that, and for many years, your body and mind think that is normal posture. All your structures and muscles have (mall)adapted to this shape. Then, one day, you want to start an athletic endeavor (great!) but unfortunately your posture is now not in an optimal shape for movement.

What does poor posture, and therefore, poor spinal alignment, produce? The body is an amazing machine. It has mechanoreceptors (nerves which sense mechanical pressure or movement) which will fire the right muscles to do what the brain is telling it to do. If you want to move or lift or whatever, and your spine is aligned, then the correct muscles will fire to perform the movement. Primary movers, big muscles like your pectorals and lats, that are designed to move your body parts fire and do the main work. Stabilizers, smaller muscles whose main function are to keep your body parts in alignment during movement, fire to keep the body structures stable so that primary movers can do the heavy work.

When the spine is not aligned, your body will do its best to enable it to perform whatever instructions your brain gives it. But knowing that your spine is not properly aligned, it will begin to fire the wrong muscles, meaning stabilizers or the wrong primary movers, in order to perform the movement. Stabilizers are great at one thing; they are designed by nature to keep the body in alignment – they are not great at creating power for large movements over long periods of time. They are smaller, and they do not have the proper mechanical leverage due to their location on the body which is not like primary movers which are placed in the right locations and attached to create huge mechanical advantages for movement. Consider the list from the Postural Restoration Institute in the document entitled Swimmer Dyssynchrony Syndrome. Muscles perform duties they were not designed to do, leading to poor swimming and injury.

Not only do muscles perform the correct functions, but also things like balance in the water get hard to accomplish. Trying to press the front part of your body down into the water becomes nearly impossible when your upper spine is frozen in a curled position. Nor is holding your body truly straight possible – so the lower part of your body wants to bend downward and trying to straighten resists muscles and structures that won’t or can’t get there.

Fixing posture then becomes a critical part of swimming well.

Sometimes, posture can be addressed by practicing activity. For example, some coaches have told me that continuous, diligent practice with Superman Glide can often aid in postural correction enough to improve balance.

Humans were designed for movement. It is the lack of movement that is creating problems in our postures. So sometimes getting people moving again and doing something other than sitting is enough. Other times it is not. Or, if someone wishes to speed up the process, then other interventions are possible and desirable.

There are many resources to address posture. I recently took the Gokhale Method which was excellent. Its methods are very much suited for the non-athletic population and think they are great for both athletes and non-athletes.

Another great resource is Foundation Training. Their therapy involves a bit more exercise and movement. However, there are some excellent exercises to help you tone up muscles and your nervous system to hold your body’s shape during movement. You can look at their DVD or find a resource who is trained in their methods on their website.

If there is anything I’ve discovered about swimming, it’s that swim training doesn’t have to take place only in the pool. There is a lot you can do out of the pool. A lot of postural correction and training can and needs to take place out of the pool. It can be like Gokhale Method where the practice does not resemble traditional exercise, or it can involve practice like more traditional exercise, like the movements described more fully in Foundation Training. Working on spinal alignment and reawakening muscles that support proper spinal alignment is a 24/7 activity.

In summary, postural improvement is an important part of swimming. Corrections to your posture both in and out of the pool will be beneficial and speed up your ability to become a better, faster, more healthy swimmer.

Coach DShen coaches Total Immersion swimming in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more posts at his training blog.

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There are two spearing angles: depth and horizontal.

Most people think of spearing angle as mostly depth. Actually, you can also spear at a horizontal angle. Using the shoulder line as center, you can spear inward towards your body centerline – a bad thing to do – or outwards or away from the shoulder line – much better and safer.

Spearing depth angle helps with body balance.

The depth angle at which you spear your hand/arm into the water can greatly affect your balance. Spearing deeper will tip more weight onto the front of your body and bring your hips up like nothing else. Spearing higher is possible, but there is a higher risk of your hips dropping unless you have good control of body balance independent of spear angle.

Spearing horizontal angle can alter direction of travel and affect stability.

You can definitely spear wider of the shoulder lines and still go in one direction. However, spearing in a direction can also start you moving in that direction as well. So horizontal angle spearing acts a method of steering.

We have also found that spearing wider can improve your stability in the water. It provides an anchor on which you can ride your body on its edge, thus improving streamline and reducing drag.

In open water when the conditions get rough, spearing wider can help you stay stable and on course when the water is constantly moving and waves are present.

Spearing angle is dynamic, not static.

Given many different factors, spearing angle can be very dynamic. For example, if you are swimming a long distance using Early Vertical Forearm (EVF) and you are getting tired, you may want to switch to a lower depth, non-EVF spear to recover a little. As mentioned previously in open water, you may need to adjust to different conditions by altering the depth of your spear. In an open water race, you may need to do a turn around a buoy and horizontal spearing angle will help you make the direction change quickly.

Spearing angle can also be dynamic based on what you’re trying to do. For example, when I practice Skate with Kicking, I always spear much deeper than when I swim full stroke because I instinctively know that I go horizontal with a depth of spear, and it helps me kick my way across a pool while in Skate position.

Spearing angle will also change based on your skill level. A deeper spearing angle is great for beginners because it is the quickest way to achieve good balance in the water. But as your skill increases in affecting body balance, you can start spearing more horizontally to learn other aspects like EVF which require a horizontal spear to perform.

Spearing deeper provides many advantages for beginners.

In TI, we teach a deeper spearing angle to most beginners. There are many advantages to this for someone just beginning to learn and imprint good swim habits.

We have already mentioned one, which is a deeper spearing angle is the easiest and fastest way to achieve a horizontal body position. The other ways: pressing the chest, leaning the body, using the weight of the recovering arm, etc. all are much more difficult and require time to master. I have found that spearing deeper is much quicker to learn and affects body balance in a positive manner the most, than any other balance aspect.

Another advantage of spearing deeper is that it helps cure the dropped elbow problem which sets you up for a poor catch and less than effective stroke back. By getting your hand/wrist below the elbow with a deeper spear, you simply cannot have a dropped elbow.

With the hand pointing at an angle downward, we say to relax the fingers and let them droop downward. When this happens, your palm is already nearly, if not fully, facing back and in perfect position to catch and push water straight back. This removes issues with spearing more horizontally with the wrist locked, and then the stroke back happens with either locked straight wrist which results in water being first pushed down – dropping your hips – then pushing back – adding finally to forward momentum – and then pushing water up at the end – again dropping your hips down. A similar thing can happen when the stroke back occurs with a locked straight entire arm.

Deeper spear angles does not necessarily mean you swim slower.

It is true that there is more frontal area exposed on the upper arm to the forward direction of motion when the spear is deeper. In theory, this does mean that a deeper spear should have more drag than horizontal spear. But in reality, we’re only talking about a thin sliver of an arm. When compared to the drag created by dropping hips due to a horizontal spear, the drag of a slightly deeper spear is pretty miniscule. The optimization of this aspect should be left to those who have sufficiently developed their skills such that they need that extra bit of speed to win a race.

There are many swimmers who do not spear horizontally, nor do they use EVF, and still swim VERY FAST. They have awesome body balance and streamline, and they have fully developed their coordination of using the entire body during a 2BK to drive their bodies forward. These factors are much more important in speed than worrying about whether your deeper spear angle creates that much more drag.

If you have to, use the deeper spear to get your hips up. This will give better results than spearing horizontal to attempt EVF but your hips start dropping.

As mentioned previously, when you fully extend your spear, your hand is already in “catch” position. All you need to do from there is pull it back, pushing water straight behind you. Accomplished swimmers will also have perfected their ability to keep their palms pushing water straight back, versus pushing in all sorts of directions other than back.

In order to swim with EVF, you must adjust your spear depth angle to horizontal.

There are many factors related to achieving EVF. One of those is that you need to get your arm as high as possible in order to be able to let the forearm/hand drop below the elbow. If your arm is not horizontal, then your arm isn’t really dropping too much since you are partially “catched” already. You also lose a little bit of stroking length in front of you – spearing horizontal means you can get your arm as far forward as possible and use the full potential of stroke length to push water from front to back.

To many swimmers, there is THE spear angle that they must find. In my experience, spearing angle is a complex, dynamic element of swimming that changes given conditions, fitness and skill level. The ultimate skill, therefore, is to build your ability to swim at a multitude of spearing angles and you can easily switch between all of them depending on what situation you find yourself in.

Coach DShen is a TI certified coach teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more posts at his blog.

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A while back, I wrote a post about my path to achieving the Early Vertical Forearm or EVF. Over a year now of coaching TI, I thought I’d capture all my EVF thoughts into one place.

Pre-requisites for EVF:

1. First, the high elbow catch requires some mobility. You must have sufficient mobility in the shoulder, arm, and elbow for you to perform this movement at all. So if you have restrictions or are stiff, you need work in this area before any progress can be made. I would search out a good physical therapist/sports medicine person to help with this. If you want to try it yourself, probably the best text I’ve found is Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett. You can also find some free resources at his website MobilityWod.com. Someone trained in the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) will also be a big help (this is why I certified in FMS; to learn how to address mobility and inbalances in the whole body, and as a coach not as a clinician).

2. You must be able to spear higher, about horizontal. The higher your elbow is at the start of the EVF, the easier it will be to let your forearm drop underneath it. But you shouldn’t be spearing horizontal to try for EVF if you haven’t perfected body balance to a point where spearing horizontal means your hips start to drop!

TI teaches a deeper spear in the beginning to help our students learn proper balance in the water. At some point, you should start seeing if you can derive proper balance through the body alone and not rely on your arm’s depth for balance. Once you have great balance no matter how deep you spear, you can then start moving towards imprinting the EVF.

Next comes neuromuscular patterning of the movement. I would break that down into 2 parts, what happens in the extended arm and what happens in the overall stroke/switch in the entire body and arms.

Extended arm:

After you address mobility, then you need to be able to get your elbow on top of your arm, or at least somewhat on top if not a bit to the side. If you cannot, you will not be able to drop your forearm/hand under your elbow – it will fold inward towards your head.

On dryland, try this drill. Extend one of your arms with your palm facing down, as if you just speared. Now, without a ton of movement in the shoulder AND keeping your hand still, rotate just your elbow from its down/side position to the top of the arm. Nice parlor trick right?

Here is a video of me explaining this movement.

That was the advanced and most desirable movement. For some, shoulder and neuromuscular issues may make this movement difficult. An easier path is to just rotate your hand inward, with the thumb starting to point down, about 5-10 degrees. This also gets your elbow nearly on top. You do not want to rotate your hand all the way inward to get your elbow all the way on top; this is bad because now your palm is not facing backward and is not in the optimal position to catch water.

In the water, you must imprint this movement as you spear. So as the spear extends outward, you must either turn your thumb inward/down slightly, or better rotate your elbow on top (without excessive rotation of the shoulder and no movement of hand). Either way puts your elbow in a more optimal position to just let your forearm drop underneath it, or nearly under it – it may bend slightly inward.

But also remember, your entire body is in motion at this point. So even if your elbow is not all the way on top, the moment you bend is when you spear the other hand so that it will end up with the hand pointing down once your body rotates with the other side spearing.

This is a good segway into the patterning of the entire movement:

I highly recommend practicing Coach Dave Cameron’s dryland drill. It is one of the best ways to drill the spearing and EVF movement.

In the water, the EVF has many elements.

First, you must be able to do this movement WITHOUT moving your upper arm during the time to stroke back. Most swimmers have imprinted just moving the entire arm back during the stroke back; this habit must be changed. So at the time when you would normally move the entire arm back, you just drop the forearm under the elbow. This is the essence of Coach Dave’s video.

Second, you must adjust the timing of your stroke back. Here is a textual description of this movement while swimming:

1. You are at the end of recovery. For the sake of clarity, let’s say the right arm is in proper spear-ready position, the left arm is extended in front of you. As we discussed before, you already have your elbow on top or near-top of the arm. Your fingers are relaxed and drooped slightly, such that your palm is facing somewhat back.

2. As the right arm begins its spear, it drops into the water. Your left arm is still extended – remember the patient lead arm!

3. As the right arm spear starts extending forward (and your body is beginning to rotate, probably getting flat at this point), your left arm bends at the elbow WHILE keeping the upper arm still extended forward. Thus the left forearm is dropping below the elbow to catch water with the entire forearm, not just hand.

4. The right arm spear is now extending forward and the left arm has a full vertical forearm now. Your body has rotated almost its finished position on the other side.

5. As the right arm spear is shooting forward, only now do you stroke back with the left hand, keeping its path straight backward which results in the elbow moving “high” in the water back with the hand. The stroke back along with the 2BK and hip drive through the torso and shoulders is what launches the spear forward, and you along with it.

Most of the time, the main issue is that you want to get your whole arm stroking back as soon as possible. You need to change that and delay it until you drop the forearm under the elbow first before stroking back.

You must leave your patient lead arm left extended forward a little longer until the recovering arm has entered the water and begun its path forward. At this point, most swimmers have imprinted a timing which is to pull the lead arm back as the recovering arm has dropped into the water. Now you must delay that by a tiny bit more to let the forearm drop down first and then stroke back.

Note that Coach Shinji has described two phases of tension. The first is when you drop your forearm down and you place pressure on the water you’ve caught with your entire arm, at the beginning of you stroking back. Then as you pass your shoulder, the tension lessens until you get a bit further down your torso and then again you use tension to push water back strongly, as you finish the stroke back to your hip. This is apparently very present for sprinting; for longer distance, they have found that there is more tension at the back of the stroke near the hip, versus in front.

All this takes a ton of practice and work, some out of the pool, but it is definitely achievable by everyone.

CoachDShen coaches in the SF Bay area. Read more about training at his blog.

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