There are a couple of other things going on here as well in conjunction with this, but you have to look a little closer. First of all, if you look at the above water shot, you can see that the head doesn’t just dip down, but it also dips over. This will cause a person to swim crooked faster than anything. In swimming, you have to envision yourself on a barbecue skewer. The head and body stay in a straight line just as if you had a skewer running through your head, while your body rotates on that axis to pull, kick and breathe. If your body breaks from that axis by wiggling, bending or moving your head from one side to the other, you lose efficiency and often swim crooked. That can kinda be a problem in the middle of a lake. Additionally, watch the left hand as Kent’s head takes that dive. Notice how his hand turns to the side with the pinkie finger down at the onset of the pull. It looks as if Kent is attempting to keep the entry and pull in in-line and he overcompensates for the head by dropping the elbow on the extension and turning his hand so as to keep the good rotation. The problem is that his misses the first and very powerful part of the pull because his hand is sideways. Keeping the head straight should correct most of this, but focusing on the position of the hand as the pull starts will be important in order to correct this.

Speaking of the pull, look at the right arm during the pull. The pull itself looks really good on both arms as you can see that he is getting some power out of each pull, but during that pull there are a bunch of bubbles being dragged through the water. This mostly has to do with the hand entry. His hand enters well beyond the top of his head and is therefore entering at a steep angle. If Kent were to make a shallower entry by entering a little closer to the top of his head, he can remove those bubbles and get  a better grip on the water.

Finally, I want to touch on the overall body position. From the side-view video you can see that Kent’s legs are dragging just a tad by the end of the length. This is due mainly to the effectiveness of the the kick. While the mechanics of the kick seem to be spot on, it’s the ankle flexibility that is the problem. Simple enough fix. Stretch out your ankles and you will generate more power from you kick.

The beauty here is that a couple of small adjustments will probably fix a number of issues, so there aren’t tons of things to focus on and get confused with. Hopefully straightening the head and bilateral breathing will have a domino effect and fix some of the other issues in the stroke.

Now go get in the water.

As soon as Dana hopped in and started swimming I noticed that his back muscles were flexing on every recovery. Some call this a stiff stroke. I see it as a weak rotation and overcompensating by lifting your arms behind you in order to get your arms to clear the water during a recovery. Ideally, you want to to let your body rotation lift your shoulder out of the water. Then all you have to do is lift your arm straight up and drop it in the water. Very easy and very little effort. When you swim flatter in the water, you have to lift your shoulder/arm out of the water by flexing your back muscles in order to complete the recovery. The can get very tiring after a while and can also cause injury. I talk more about this type of injury here. In order for Dana to get the proper rotation, he needs to work on over exaggerating the  body roll. We tried it a few times that day and Dana mentioned it felt very strange, like it was too much rotation. For me watching though, it looked just right.

One of the other things that I noticed right away, is that Dana has some limited flexibility in his shoulders. Upon mentioning it though, Dana told me that he had an injury in his shoulder and that the the main reason for his lack of mobility. This will be a bigger challenge if you are injured, but still a very important thing to work on. I am always stressing flexibility here, but if one arm is less flexible than the other, then that means you have to over compensate in other areas of your stroke to keep everything in check. Depending on what those adjustments are, you could cause further injury. So if you don’t have symmetry in your stroke for some reason, that is something you should work on right away.

Overall Dana has a good head and body position, but you can see that his feet do sink/drag a little. If I was teaching you the Total Immersion method, I would tell you that Dana needs to lower his chest in the water to bring up his feet. The truth, however, is that Dana’s issue has nothing to do with balance or body position. It has everything to do with his kick. A very slight improvement in his kick will bring his feet to the surface and fix the problem. By burying your chest deeper into the water to avoid the problem can cause more problems (rotation, timing of the breath, etc) and to me, that’s putting a bandaid on a broken leg. Fix the problem, don’t mask it.

Speaking of the kick, here’s something interesting that I picked up on while watching his videos (never saw it at the pool). It’s easiest to see on the clip above (DL5).Dana’s right ankle is more flexible that his left. Why? His body rotates more to the right, so it takes a bigger/better kick to rotate in the opposite direction.  Remember when I mentioned earlier about overcompensating for his injury? I would be willing to bet that this ties in with his shoulder injury. So a injured shoulder causes one ankle

to be more flexible than another. If I just walked up and told you that you would think I’m out there huh? When you break it down though, it’s not such a stretch. Take that a step further, if Dana were to have a foot/ankle injury from running, it would all tie back to the shoulder. Crazy huh? Something to think about the next time you get hurt. Man I’m getting way off track here……Breathing every 3 in training and throwing on some fins from time to time with help his kick which will improve his rotation and the dropping/dragging of his legs.

In terms of pulling, Dana has a pretty good pull. This is usually the part of my post that I harp on dropping your elbow and losing power in your stroke. In looking at Dana’s stroke though, he has pretty good pull. He does drop his elbow a little and can work on that, but overall is good to go. I do notice though that his hands are pulling some bubbles. Very minor fix, but if he enters his hands a little sooner and still extends like he does underwater, he will correct that (He can also enter his hand a little steeper and then extend, it will accomplish the same thing.)

On second thought, Dana should swim less and race more using breastroke. I don’t really like it when he runs me down, so a little more buffer in the water would serve me well.

OK, So I spent a little time with Mark and going over his stroke a while back. Mark has been a triathlete for a while now, so this isn’t the first time he’s hopped in a pool, and it shows. He has a good body position and a forceful pull. There are a few key things that I picked up on right away though. They are minor tweaks visually, but these changes will shave many, many minutes off of his next swim time. So I will hit each one in my order of importance.

The Pull: This is another good example of dropping your elbow. As his pull begins, his elbow is breaking the vertical plane of the water before his hand. So not only is he not able to utilize his forearm as part of his ‘paddle’ in the pulling process, but his hand is left to pull water that is already moving in the same direction, much like swimming upstream. A big part of his problem is the bad advice that he had been previous given. What was the advice? He was told that he was pulling too deep and needed to be pulling closer to his body. Ugh. I think I need to write about all the bad advice out there. I frequent a few sites and sometimes I just shake my head and move on after reading all the horrible tips. I digress…Think of it like this: if you don’t want to drop your elbow because it will move the water you want to pull (see my upstream comment above), then what do you think your entire body is going to do? To take it in another direction, look at all the great swimmers and see how many of them have a big bend in their elbow and pull close to their body. If you find one let me know.

As soon as I suggested a deeper pull, Mark gave it a try and instantly noticed the difference. He got that A-ha! moment and was swimming better immediately.

Uneven Stroke: As you can see from all 3 videos, Mark always breathes to his right, and doing this has created an uneven stroke. His left arm fully extends as that is the arm that is gliding while he breathes. His right arm, however, doesn’t extend as far forward and also finishes the glide wider than the left. This is going to do a couple things. First, it will cause Mark to swim off course (or have to correct his line constantly) because the left arm is pulling more water than the right. It will also make it harder to properly rotate to both sides. Right now he rotates well when he breathes and is flat during the alternate stroke. So what’s the fix? Alternate or bilateral breathing is the easy first step. It will dramatically help you make your stroke symetrical. This is important when swimming in a pool with a black line and critical when swimming in open water with no guide to look at.

Ankle flexibility: I bring this up almost every time I look at someone’s stroke, so I won’t beat a dead horse, but take a look at Mark’s kick. Functionally it’s really good. He isn’t kicking in circles (or like he runs), but like he’s kicking a ball. The missing piece to this puzzle is that whip you get from your ankle, which is the key to an effective kick. There’s no majic to fixing this. Kick more. Kick with fins. Do ankle stretches. Done and done.

In the scale of  difficultly in swimming fixes, these are relatively easy to adjust to. Fixing the dropping elbow will have the most challenge, but since Mark was catching on before we even got out of the water, I imagine it might already be fixed. Happy swimming.

One of the first things that you notice is Sheri’s body position. You can see pretty quickly that her hips are riding a bit low in the water. Typically, this is a simple head position issue. You want to have your head lined up with the rest of your body, as opposed to having your head up, looking out in front of you. In this case though, Sheri does a pretty good job at keeping her head in the proper position. In fact, even when she turns to breathe she does a nice job at not lifting her head for air. Instead, Sheri’s poor body position is because of two different issues; she tends to swim with her chest rather high in the water and her kick is generating almost no lift.

The solution to the first part is rather easy, the second is a bit more of a challenge. Sheri needs to lower her upper body down into the water by a few inches. It’s very simple to do but will often feel awkward because it takes a while to get comfortable swimming so low in the water.  One way to make the adjustment is to push off the wall in a streamlined position,  and with no kicking or pulling, adjust your body position so that you are flat or horizontal in the water. It may take a kick or two to keep your feet on the surface once you slow down from the push off the wall, but once you find that flat position in the water, you need to use it in your regular swimming.

The next piece of this puzzle is her kick. Sheri’s kick looks to be a 4 beat crossover kick. This means that she will kick twice for every arm stroke and  that at a certain point in her kick the left leg crosses under the right. Why the crossover? If you watch, you can see that she has good body rotation when she breathes to the left, but much flatter when she rotates to the right. A good kick is typically straight down and initiates the rotation to the other side. Because her kick is weak and rotation not as strong on this side, Sheri’s left, or bottom leg tries to compensate by kicking diagnally and across her body. Hence the cross over.

The main problem with Sheri’s kick is that it is almost entirely from the knees down. She is generating no power from her hips. As I have mentioned other times, you want to kick in freestyle like you kick a ball. The hips start the kicking motion and you finish through the knee and ankle. Sheri’s hips and knees aren’t coordinating with each other, so any force that she is creating is coming from her knees and ankles.

Fixing this can be a bit more of a challenge, because the kick creates a rhythm and a timing for the whole stroke, and so changing this bad habit often feels like you are overhauling your entire stroke. I would recommend that she dedicate some serious pool time this winter to kicking, both with and without fins, and really focus on kicking a ball everytime.

The final piece of Sheri’s stroke that I want to address is a common one. Dropping her elbow. As Sheri’s arm begins the pull, you can see that it’s her elbow, not her hand or forearm that is the leading edge through the water. In fact, her forearm doesn’t get vertical until her pull is at her hips. I go into greater detail about this problem here, but in a nutshell she needs pull with her hand and forearm and not her elbow. A good drill to do to work on this is swimming with a closed fist. By removing the surface area of your hand you are forced to use your wrist and forearm to move you through the water. By doing this and focusing on where your elbow should be in relation to your forearm, you can correct the problem. Doing the pull correctly usually results in that AH HA! moment as you generate considerable more power from each stroke immediately.

Fixing bad habits in the water can be a bit frustrating, but if Sheri spends the time now making these adjustments, she will be coming out of the water faster and have used less energy. I’m sure this will be a motivator, because I know Sheri would love nothing more than to get the heck out of the water and onto something else, like the bike and the run.

Body Position: The first thing I noticed was the body position in the water. Her hips are riding a little low in the water, and this is the main reason her kick rate is so high. (See the pic below as well) She’s using her kick not for rotation or propulsion (see more on the kick here and here), but for lift. The kick is trying to keep here hips/legs high in the water. By adjusting her overall body position slightly she will save her legs from all the kicking and save gobs of energy in the process.

Pull: In watching her swim, I could tell pretty quickly that Ana drops her elbow as she pulls. It can be a little difficult to pick up if you don’t know what your looking for, so I grabbed a still shot so that you can see what I am trying to point out. As I have mentioned before, dropping your elbow is very common in all levels of athletes, and especially so as you fatigue because you can maintain your cadence. The problem is that you’re reducing the efficiency of your pull dramatically as you do this. So once we adjust the body position, we can focus on maximizing the pull. (I go into the high elbow in much greater detail here, but in a nutshell, by leading your pull through the water with your elbow, you can drastically decrease the effectiveness of your stroke. We worked on the pull a good bit while we were there and I could see some great improvement by the end of the session. In fact, if you look at the two videos posted here you can see a difference in the second video (taken towards the end of the swim).

Kick: Now that the position is corrected, we can adjust the kick itself, because if we tried to do it first, her legs would just sink or she would revert back to her old ways so that she wouldn’t sink.

Ana has a 6 beat kick, meaning that for every stroke cycle she kicks 6 times, or 3 kicks for every pull. It takes her about 15 strokes to swim (which by the way is quite good) so that means she kicks 45 times for every 25 yards, or about 7,600 times in an Ironman swim. If she can convert her swim to a 2 beat kick (more about the 2 beat kick here), she could reduce her effort by 5,100 kicks in the Ironman. That energy would be much better spent on the bike and run. Improving her kick will also improve her body rotation, which will help her pull and body position.

For those learning to swim, or even for those who’ve been swimming for a while, this might seem like I’m beating up a a good stroke. Truth is, it is a good stroke (Don’t worry Ana!) but there are some key things holding her back from getting to the next level. And for the purists out there, yes there are some other things going on, like the pitch of her hand and her entry point, (causing some of those bubbles during her pull) for example, but these are minor and simple to correct once some of the other stuff is addressed.

Clear as mud right? Got questions? Let me have it.

Oh and Sheri, don’t worry, you’re next

“The biggest problem I think I am having is with rotation of my hips. I swim really flat and despite conscious effort to roll the hips, I’m only able to muster maybe a 10-15 degree deflection from a horizontal plane. When I look around, I see swim team kids rolling their hips (and torsos) at 30-40 and more degrees. There have been times when I felt I was getting it, and could feel the speed improve and effort diminish, so I know it’s the right thing to do, but no sooner do I get there than I’m at a wall and have to start all over. I watch your two-beat kick video once a week but I just can’t put it all together. Now that I’m doing actual workouts, I am learning that my pull bouy splits are about the same as a regular swim split, so my kick is not doing much. In fact, when I first started doing kickboard, I could barely propel myself the length of the pool! I can now do 50′s without dying, so I think that is also a factor.

I’m sure there are a hundred other flaws with my stroke, and would eventually like to get bi-lateral breathing down, but I think if I can figure out the rotation thing I will be able to make some progress. I am open to any suggestions or coach recommendations you may be able to offer.”

Lots of people talk about generating the rotation from the hips, but I don’t think the hips are the starting point. stand up, put your hands in a streamlined position, and rotate from your hips like you would in a pool (no arm movement). Basically a twisting motion. Now hop in the water, streamlined position and try and rotate your hips. It’s impossible. The reason is that on land your feet are planted on the ground and your hips can leverage off of that. in the water your feet are not planted to anything, making it impossible to twist. So you need to be able to plant your feet..aka.. have a good kick. A good kick allows your hips to have something to leverage off of. So the fact that you say you have trouble rotating and you have a poor kick are not independant of each other. One is the reason for the other. 

My best advice without seeing you swim is to work your kick. Get some simple, rubber fins (not zoomers) and spend some time flexing your ankles. As you become a better kicker, it will become easier to rotate.

…..

“How do you do your swim training? I am a former swimmer myself and so I really don’t need to work on my swimming  as much as the bike/run. I’ve tried just swimming 2-3 days a week and that makes me lose my feel for the water. Currently I am swimming A LOT and I feel amazing in the water just about every day. I don’t think swimming 4-6 times a week is ideal since swimming is my strongest point by far, but I don’t like losing my feel for the water. How do you balance that out?”

I used to be the same way, but changed the way I do my workouts now. Because I’ve been swimming since the 70′s and have a pretty good stroke, I have almost completely eliminated drills. I also give myself only about 500 yards to warm up, whereas when I was just swimming, it would take me 1500 yards or so to warm up. The main reason I changed was because of the short amount of time we are given to warm up at the races, so I thought I would try and adjust my habits. So now basically I get right down to business. Might not be for everyone, but seems to work for me.
 
……

“How do you keep your elbow from dropping during extension?”

Closed fist drill can help. Close your fist and try and swim with your forearms as your paddles. Getting a deeper pull also helps. bend your elbow only about 10 degrees in your initial pull. Other than that, make sure that after your arm enters and extends, that your hand/forearm is the first thing to start pulling and not your entire arm. There are also some gadgets out there that claim to help, but I’ve never tried them so won’t comment.
….

“How do you eliminate bubbles during entry and pull?”

Think of your hand as a person. You want that person to dive into the water (i.e. fingertips first) just above your head and then extend underwater to shake any remaining bubbles. Don’t let your hand slap the water!

…..

“You seem to have great flexibility during your extension and pull, is this from years of swimming or do you do additional stretching?”

 Both. All the swimming helps but I still stretch the shoulders before every workout. Doesn’t take long, but could be the easiest way to get faster in the water. This  is key for someone like yourself. certainly a top 3 in importance.

…..

“What would be some good main sets for a Half Ironman?”

One of the keys to swimming is consistant pace. Newer swimmers especially tend to be all over the place when it comes to pacing. Swimming 2000 yards without stopping is fine if you are needing to build some confidence, but you won’t learn pace. Repeat efforts with short rest and a tight leash on pace will make you a better swimmer in a hurry.  I would say that repeat 200′s up to repeat 500′s are great. A set I may do to get in shape would be 5X200′s with a 2:30 interval. That means I am pushing off the wall at 2:30. There is no set rest. As you get tired you get less rest. It really forces pace. 5X200′s with 20 sec rest isn’t nearly as hard or focused as you will get the same rest no matter what your pace is. Athlete’s with a running background have a real hard time with this as they grew up with a goal time and a set amount of rest in their track workouts.

“I’ve got a few questions to ask.  If you hadn’t noticed this is my first season, and while it’s too late to improve my stroke for now, I’d like to put in some good time over the winter.  I admittedly haven’t been doing much stroke work since I don’t want to teach myself a drill incorrectly from reading it over the internet.  Right now it seems like getting some paddles and either a pull buoy, ankle lock or both would be a good idea since they seem to be a bit more self-explanatory.  Any advice here for a newbie?  I’m not a complete beginner swimmer, but my experience is very limited.  Also, last workout I was able to get in some good times doing a 2-beat kick, close to my previous times using a 6 beat.  Not quite as fast, but within a minute per 500 yards. ”

Generally speaking, when someone starts swimming, they tend to have their head and shoulders riding very high in the water with the hips and legs dragging behind (poor balance). Poor rotation and a horrible streamline are also pretty standard. To compensate for this, the swimmer will kick a little harder to bring the hips up and to try and generate a little more propulsion. My experience is that this comes in the form of the 4 beat kick (2 kicks for every stroke). As the swimmer gets better, the body position improves and the streamline gets better, but the kick doesn’t seem to change. Why? well my experience has been that its the rhythm that’s so hard to break. Its just a classic bad habit, and it makes it very difficult to change up your tempo on the fly once the habit is formed.

So what’s the big deal? Who cares how many times you kick? Well, there are a couple of big reasons, so let me explain the function of the kick first.

The purpose of the your kick, at least in distance swimming, is primarily rotation and a little for balance. There’s not much in the way of propulsion. When you rotate to one side, the leg kicks to start the rotation in the other direction. The better the kick, the better the rotation. (People are often told to rotate from the hips, and I have no issue with that. I think it’s more of a mental image that anything. Try and rotate your hips without using your feet or arms and you will see that it’s impossible, which brings me back to the kick. ) That same downward thrust will also raise the legs and hips if needed, however, the better you get in the pool, the less that is needed.

With a 2 beat kick, your bottom leg (leg closest to the bottom of the pool) kicks shortly after the arm begins its pull. So your right arm enters the water and right after it begins its pull, the right leg applies one swift kick. That one, powerful, well placed kick is all you need to begin rotating to the left side. If you have a 4 beat kick, that means that your bottom legs kicks to start the rotation and the top leg immediately follows and COUNTERS that kick, slowing or hindering the rotation. People with a 4 beat tend to struggle more with a good rotation as their kick isn’t helping as much as it should. The 6 beat kick allows for two kicks toward rotation, and one to counter, so you are netting out a solid rotation. Anything more than that and you are swimming from a shark in an all out sprint.
Trying to get a good visual of that kick? Think of kicking a soccer ball with your bottom leg. Swift deliberate and powerful. Of course the flexibility of your ankles come into play as well.

Now we all know that the quads are some pretty large muscles, and while they can generate some pretty powerful movements, they also burn up a serious amount of oxygen. So, if you are generating a lot of power and burning a ton of oxygen, but aren’t getting much benefit from it (propulsion) why wear yourself and your legs out? This, in my opinion, why the 2 beat kick is so important to learn if you are doing triathlons or swimming long distances.

Alright, so lets take a look at the two types of kick. First off, take a look at Michelle’s freestyle. She has a great stroke and has really improved over the last 2 seasons.  In the video, she is swimming a little faster than 1:20 per hundred yards and quite comfortable. Clearly no slouch. Pay attention to the kick.

 Now, take a look at a two beat kick. In this clip I am swimming about 1:12 per hundred yards.

The differences are pretty subtle between the two strokes top to bottom, but Michelle has a 4 beat and I have a 2 beat. Who looks like they’re spending more energy?

This goes back to another point I tend to talk about. A more efficient swim will not only make you a faster swimmer, but make you a faster cyclist because you are much fresher coming out of the water.

A lot to think about here, but hop in the pool and give it a try. So, at what level of a swimmer should you try to work on getting into a 2 beat kick?  I think you should learn it from the start. It seems like breaking the habit of the 4 beat kick is like quitting smoking, based on the swimmers I help.

Good Luck and let me know if I can help.

Since it was a kicking question that started this whole discussion, I thought that’s where I would start.  From what I can observe from the above water shot the flutter kick looks pretty good. Ankles need to flex a little more in order to create a more effective kick, but the fundamentals are there. No scissor kicks, no kicking in circles, etc. The reason Mike is kicking so much is because he is using his kick to fight his body position. If he were to stop kicking altogether his legs would sink immediately and he would end up vertical in the water.

The main reason for the body position being too upright is the position of the head, which is riding too high in the water. He is wanting to see where he’s going which is common, but more importantly, it looks like he is having a little trouble seeing the world from a horizontal perspective. Both of which are very common in newer swimmers.  Your mind wants to see everything in a vertical orientation, like in everything else you do. It’s common and will take a little time to adjust. So, the first thing he needs to do is lower his head in the water. How much? Just as you would when you’re standing straight and looking forward. Head stays in line with your body. Now, this means that you’ll be looking straight down, and that’s OK (that’s what the lines and crosses at the bottom of the pool are for). Once you get used to that then you can crane your neck (or stick your chin out) and then look up slightly to see ahead of you. The neck crane will lower your head further into the water so that when you shift your eyes/head to see ahead, they will cancel each other out. Make sense?

Let’s discuss the pull…

I can see that with both of Mike’s arms that he is dropping his elbow as he pulls (see my article on this topic). Doing this drastically reduces the efficiency of the pull. Part of the reason is that the bend in the elbow is too great. As your arm begins to fatigue it becomes very easy to drop your elbow without noticing that your form is falling apart when your arm is bent this much.  So once the head and body position are adjusted, I would suggest that he tries to pull MUCH deeper. The bend in the  elbow should be more like 10 degrees than 90 degrees. This should give you some more power, further reducing the big need to kick.

Finally, the body rotation. Once he gets the hang of the other stuff, it’s time to start focusing on rotating his body from one side to the other. (Swimming flat in the water also can cause a shift in body position like he is experiencing, as the beginning of the pull creates lift) This will help your pull, make your recovery easier and start to get you more streamlined. While focusing on the deep pull, take that same deep pull but this time roll your shoulders into it so that the pull is deeper than before. You ultimately want to feel like you are rolling all the way from one side of you body to the other, but it’s gonna feel strange at first, so ease into it. I know this just hitting the highlights of body rotation, but I’ll drill into that another day.

After those skills are improved upon, another review should be done to work on the next set of skills.

Questions? Let me have it. Have a video of your stroke that you would like me to breakdown? Let me know. You know where to find me.

Problem is good kicking requires good flexibility, not huge muscles. Most hear “kick from the hips” and begin a running type motion with their legs. While the kick does orignate from the hips (think of a soccer kick instead of a running motion), the hip motion is rather subtle. The bulk of the work is done by the ankles. Take a look at a rather typical kick performed correctly

Notice how there is a subtle bend in the hips, subtle knee bend, but a large flex of the ankle. Like a fin, the power is generated from that whipping motion. Without that, you are just stirring the water with your legs.

One of the biggest obstacles for triathletes is flexibility in the ankles.  Afterall, it’s not really a requirement for cycling or running. So what’s the easiest way to fix this? Couple of ways. First, start doing kick sets with fins. Nothing fancy. Just good ‘ole black, rubber fins. Not Zoomers. Let me say that again. NOT ZOOMERS. Regular length fins will stretch the tendons, ligaments and muscles in the ankles. Zoomers don’t do anything but help you keep up with faster people in your lane .  During the kick sets you want to really focus on generating the power from your ankle. If your ankles start to hurt during the set, then you’re doing it right. Having trouble working just the ankles? While you’re kicking with fins, put on a pull buoy. Yes, a pull buoy. If you can’t keep the pull buoy in place while you kick then you have something new to work on. Once you get it down, it may help isolate things a little better.

Other than fins, stretching is key. On a soft surface, sit down on your ankles for 30 seconds at a time. Once you get over that hump, lean back on the ankles for sets of 30 seconds at a time. It doesn’t take much time or effort. Do it in front of the TV during commercial breaks.

The other big problem is the timing of the kick. As I stated previously, the purpose of the kick for a distance swimmer is balance and rotation, not propulsion.  If you thought you were propelling yourself with your kick, go time yourself in a 100 yard kick and and 100 pull and compare the two. So, if the goal is to use the kick to rotate from one side to the other, it makes sense that one well placed kick in conjunction with with your pull is all you should need to rotate back and forth. This is called a two beat kick. Swimmers lacking a solid kick have trouble reducing the engine down to a 2 beat. Often you see a 4 or 6 beat kick doing the same work as a well performed 2 beat. If you can’t pull off the 2 beat and you throw in a few more kicks because you can’t get the timing down, what’s the big deal? The big deal is your quads. They are very large muscles that eat up a ton of oxygen and calories to achieve nothing a two beat kick isn’t doing. Eliminating wasted energy is that efficiency goal that we all work towards.

Happy with your six beat kick while you swim and are not going to worry about it? That’s ok too. Thanks for the 4 minute lead out of the water…