Comments on: Kick Timing 101: Two-, Four, and Six-Beat Kick

By: Stuart McDougal

Stuart McDougal — Sat, 16 May 2015 14:52:00 +0000

Hi Tony, You are concentrating a bit too much on the legs. Kicking from the knees is a problem, and causes to much knee flexion (bend), kick too early and why you are getting the splash. Kicking from knees is like tapping on the breaks and can also drive the hips downward increasing the body’s drag profile. Concentrate and kicking from the hip/glutes (your rump), or start at the hips and finish with a light flick (down) of the toes. This will reduce the tendency to kick from knees (quads) move the motion to the hips (glutes). You can also think of the hip/glutes as a handle of a whip where gentle motion begins, kinetic energy snaps through to the toes.

By: Tony Ball

Tony Ball — Sun, 03 May 2015 05:03:00 +0000

OK, I´ve been practising more now, and I really feel there is some potential in this two footed kick. At the moment I´ve been trying to keep a nice stream lined profile and just kicking gentlely from the knees, but that made my feet break the surface sometimes resulting in a very un-TI splash! So I concentrated on pointing my toes out backwards as much as possible, which seems to help straighten my legs more. As I relaxed into this stroke pattern the kick from the knee seemed to turn into wave from the hip, and I found I could simply let my torso drift lower and use my core muscles to lift my hips upwards which gave me another “wave”.
I can´t say if I´m setting faster times (I gave up counting lengths after loosing count so many times) but it´s feeling easier and smoother, like I said I think there is potential in this and in a month I´m off to Club LaSanta sport so hopefully I can get some tips there (Mette Jacobsen will be there!)

By: Tony Ball

Tony Ball — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 18:46:00 +0000

Has anyone out there tried a 2 beat kick but with both feet together? I had a go today and thought it went very well.